Curator/ Arwen Yang
All things and relationships in the world come from the harmony of causes and conditions; joy, anger, sorrow, birth, aging, illness and death, gatherings and separations, fame, fortune and power. They are like dreams and illusions, like water bubbles and reflections, like morning dew and lightning. From the perspective of the boundless universe, all the emotions which we are experiencing right now and which feel so real, are fleeting. However, if everything is false and illusory, why must people go through this life? Laughter and tears, pursuit and abandonment, all the pain and helpless struggle and wandering, so heart-wrenching, so concerned, so unforgettable. Why bother?
It is in these impermanent changes that we experience it, feel it, and understand ourselves and our true nature. This is the process of spiritual practice. All the dazzling pursuits in the world are like dreams and bubbles, but they are not the essence of pain. The source of pain is a thought in a person's heart. "The Surangama Sutra" says: "Not being a holy mind is called a good state." It means that if a person who cultivates blessings and wisdom has no attachment to the special beauty that he encounters, then it is indeed a beautiful state. To be peaceful and unattached in all realms is the saying in “The Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment “ that "the awareness of illusion is the departure from it". In this way, the realm of beauty and goodness will naturally increase, and "the absence of illusion is the awakening". It is a blessing for the soul to encounter extraordinary art. Occasionally, as we can observe it with a pure mind, once in a while, we would be liberated after seeing it.
In this exhibition, artist Pascal van der Graaf continues the new techniques he has developed in the past two years and applies them to different sizes and more shapes. The picture frame has expanded from the original corners and rectangles to circles and hexagons; in terms of folding methods, he used tools to make the canvas no longer just face the direction of gravity. For example, in "The Dream Bubble", the canvas was concentrated inward to the center of the circle. In terms of color, the artist tried different pigments, such as the bright pink in "Corner V". In terms of composition, he developed the starbursts blooming like flowers on "The Dream Bubble". There are also two paintings of "Effortless", in which the artist cleans the remaining paint from the brush on the canvas. It is also another way to explore this kind of car paint. There are no clear boundaries between the colors, as if the universe is chaotic, and the stars shine like a galaxy. The colors change with the viewing angle, just like the magical fantasy of fairies in fairy tales. The lines created by the artist are like a burst of energy, and the colors are like lotuses blooming in the pure land of the soul.
The peaceful and balanced mind outside the painting is the meditator on the lotus flower. There are four levels in meditation. Among them, the first Zen has Samsattva, that is to say, the practitioner may see a dazzling array of various radiant scenes, generate awareness, feel this beauty, and then have expectations, and will think about and find something more beautiful; the second Zen does not have Samsattva, which means that the practitioner has integrated into the beautiful and joyful Zen state, and no longer expects or searches for it.
Pascal van der Graaf uses such colorful creations to sing about all things and encounters in the world, which also lead us into the beautiful realm of the first and second stages of Zen. It comes from the pure inspiration of the artist, rather than the tossing and turning of troubled consciousness. When facing works of art, we should perceive them with a pure state of mind and look at them with the eyes of wisdom. Look at it this way and deal with it as it is. Just like life.
"All unconditioned dharmas are as empty as emptiness, as if the mind is immovable, and all dharmas are within it."
