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by Vanessa Conte
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To begin the New Year, PaintingsDIRECT.com presents an exhibition of four artists whose insight and artistic inspiration come from retracing history. Chinese Buddhist sculpture, photographs and documents from the Holocaust and Biblical stories from the Old and New Testaments make up a wide spectrum of sources that these artists look back to in an attempt to interpret the reality of contemporary life.
Featuring work by Azen Tsang, Sheila Kriemelman and Eugene Abeshaus. |
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Azen Tsang |
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Indonesian artist Azen Tsang documents details of Buddhist statuary that he found spiritually inspiring during his travels through the Yungang Caves in Northwestern China. Instead of using photography, the artist manually catalogs these images in paintings, as a type of meditation. "I use colors, lines and forms to record all of my deepest mental impressions. The result is a vivid record of my spiritual journey, which started when I was in Indonesia and continued on through my life in China, Hong Kong and The United States."
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Ensemble (1988)
Azen Tsang |
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Tsang's series of oil paintings from the Yungang Caves functions as a chronicle of his pilgrimage and offers insight into the spiritual journey of Buddhism. The central focus of Prayer is the mudra, or hand gesture, of the statue. This particular gesture is called the abhaya mudra, which symbolizes fearlessness, a quality that is necessary to attain the goals of the Buddhist spiritual path. |
Prayers (1988)
Azen Tsang |
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Through his placement and cropping of the religious statuary, Tsang attempts to replicate the experience of standing before the monumental sculptures of Yungang. The solid, volumetric portrait in the foreground of Pity for the Nation allows us to hone in on the sympathetic eyes that are so awe-inspiring. In Ensemble, the artist compares a small head to a hand four times its size, illustrating the grandeur of these figures which tower up to three stories in height.
Tsang's Yungang paintings place the viewer behind the eye of the artist to partake in his wonderment and humility.
Sign the guestbook of Azen Tsang.
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Pity for the Nation (1988)
Azen Tsang |
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Sheila Kriemelman |
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The starkness of Sheila Kriemelman's palette provides no cushion for her weighty subject: victims of the Holocaust. The artist's portfolio on PaintingsDIRECT.com focuses specifically on Dachau, the site of a Nazi concentration camp in Germany from 1933 to 1945. Kriemelman uses black, white, gray and red to render portraits of prisoners with chilling narratives. In contrast to the richness of her content, the threadbare palette accentuates the individuality of the victims' faces and the uniformity of their garments.
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Liberation Day (1994)
Sheila Kriemelman |
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Kriemelman captures the enduring spirit of the prisoners in her series Portraits of Courage. Working from authentic, archived photographs, the artist re-documents the lives of Jews and homosexuals persecuted by the Nazis. "The phenomenal unquenchable power of the humanity of the victims, whether they ultimately survived or not sears me, haunts me, lives inside me and empowers me a half a century after the camp gates of Dachau were dismantled. The horrific narrative of the work is ultimately a witness to the victims' faith, courage and their triumphant humanity."
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Portraits of Courage: German Homosexual (1994)
Sheila Kriemelman |
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These narrative paintings combine text and images culled from the artist's extensive research. The Women portrays a few female prisoners signaling someone with their hands. Cursive script is painted at the bottom of the canvas. "The text is from a letter written by Heinrich Himmler, October 4, 1943, expressing his disinterest in 'whether or not 10,000 Russian women collapse from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch' for the Nazis." This layering of text and image elicits a helpless response to the outrageous mindset of the women's oppressors. Kriemelman confronts us with the undying spirit of the victims, and baffles us with the mystery of this irrevocable part of history.
Sign the guestbook of Sheila Kriemelman. |
The Women (1994)
Sheila Kriemelman |
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Eugene Abeshaus |
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Founder of a Jewish artist collective in the mid-1970s called Aleph, Eugene Abeshaus has been creating works centered around his heritage for more than thirty years. In Leningrad in the 1970s, Judaic content was not acceptable, making the Aleph members' artworks appear to be highly controversial. Many members of the group emigrated to the United States to continue creating their work in a more supportive atmosphere.
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The Golden Sheep (1996)
Eugene Abeshaus |
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The series of paintings that Abeshaus is exhibiting on PaintingsDIRECT.com, Vanity of Vanities, uses Biblical myths to address greed and the creation of value. The Golden Sheep is a comical play off the "The Golden Fleece," the tale of Jason and the Argonauts' quest for riches. The grinning golden sheep grazes amongst the jeweled grasses, appearing as an incarnation of greed itself. In Dialog (Dinosaur), the artist refers to this timid, crystalline reptile as "representing the fleeting nature of life." The dinosaur surrenders to its winged attacker to illustrate the temporality and short-lived pleasure of money.
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Dialog (Dinosaur (1999)
Eugene Abeshaus |
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Abeshaus uses gold leaf in his work to present the appearance of decoration and frivolity. In Still Life with a Fish the artist describes the fish as representing "characteristics of human nature like stinginess, indifference and stupidity." By painting the fish and other banal objects on gold leaf, the artist mocks the value that we place on such things.
Sign the guestbook of Eugene Abeshaus. |
Still Life with a Fish (1997)
Eugene Abeshaus |
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