| Arlene Shechet mines the fertile visual languages of East and West. Her sculptures reinterpret Buddhist iconography, focusing on the three central motifs, Buddha, stupa (or monument) and vase. Images flow freely from Buddha to stupa to case and back again. The bulging forms of the Buddhas, their mass of once wet hydrocal barely contained by paint skins, exist in the space between becoming and dissolving. Shechet embeds architectural plans fro stupas in the paper cases, and loosened by her work process, these images flow like glaze. Buddhism and art making, decorative and fine art, solidity and fragility, are addressed with humor balanced by understanding of Buddhist notions of time and attention. Shechet has devised innovative process to produce these sculptures, which provide new images for an ancient vocabulary of ideas and forms. |
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