Emptiness Potential, and Atonement, immersive installation

Sangre De Cristo Art Gallery, Pueblo 2022

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A room was built inside the gallery. Projections of sky and water were interrupted by cast acrylic hands, chains, and pierced ceramic bowls. Sound interrupted the silence of the environment. Two life-size ceramic body casts made of porcelain and local clay from a gold mine hung in space from rusted chains, while wraiths of recycled plastic and gold leaf hung from rusted grid-like slabs of meat. Slowly spinning, they formed moving shadows. Poetry wrapped the walls and ceiling.

 

 

‘Vision is Mind, Mind is Empty, Emptiness is Clear Light, Clear Light is Union, Union is Great Bliss’

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From the fivefold teachings of Dawa Gyaltsen

“In ordinary experience, every moment takes place when the previous moment dies. Every new breath follows the death of the previous breath. In-between breaths, thoughts, days, events, in-between everything, there are gaps; and each gap offers the possibility of glimpsing pure emptiness [potential] through the clouds… With training, it’s possible to become aware of the space in-between, the gap in-between our thoughts, our moods, our perceptions, and our breaths. What makes this gap so precious? Let’s say we are looking at a cloudy sky. Some clouds are lighter or darker than others; they move fast or slow, disperse and change shape and dissolve into one another. Then suddenly there’s an opening, and for an instant, we glimpse the sun. That opening in the clouds is the gap.”

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    In Love with the World: A Monk's Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, Helen Tworkov