Art Minimal & Conceptual Only
Maria Lewis
above image: GATE #46 from Gateless Gate Series 2006
below are two excerpts from pg. 33 of:
SHAPING
SPACE 3rd edition
published
by Wadsworth Books 2007, text by P. Zelanski & M. Fisher
(
excerpt from page 33 Shaping Space third edition )
Titles
may also play a significant role in the artist’s development of the
piece as well as in viewers’ discovery of its meaning. If Maria Lewis’s
minimalist conceptual piece shown in Figure 1.45 (note:
Figure 1.45 is above image)
were listed simply as Untitled, we could identify its design elements -
the way light turns the stitching holes into a line of bright spots,
the gentle curvature of the paper band, the color changes where
attention to what the artist is trying to do. Even though the title is
obscure, it starts to awaken some dim kind of awareness within us. The
artist helps us further with a brief explanation of her process in
developing 49 paper works on the theme “Gateless Gate”.
(
Artist Statement from page 33 Shaping Space third edition )
These
forty-nine works are all inspired by Zen koans. These koans were
written in the 12th century by the Zen master Ekai. A typical Zen
master would say to his students about these koan stories: “If you like
sweets and easy living, skip this; it is about being tremendously
intent on Satori, ENLIGHTENMENT. It can happen to you. In a flashing
moment something opens, you are new all through. You see the same
unsame world with fresh eyes.” None of the stories make any pretense of
logic. They are dealing with states of mind rather than words.
I
contemplated for a while how to photograph these ephemeral works. My
main focus was to express the joy of enlightenment through them. For me
that meant they had to change, they needed to be one way and then
present themselves in another. It was quite by accident that one day I
held one up in the window, and then instantly felt they had a
connection; they had become a window between heaven and earth. They
could express on their own that tiny portal of spiritual space that is
needed to move toward enlightenment.
more Maria Lewis
Art Minimal first page
email: mindweb@sprynet.com