"The Unexpected Edge: Yugen in Contemporary Art" Exhibition
Cavin-Morris Gallery
This event has ended.
Yugen is the Japanese word for the mysterious or profound sense of beauty in the Universe. It is the power to evoke rather than to directly show. It is Exquisite Mystery as it informs the creative process. It is not an aesthetic we use as a critical criteria in the West. This is unfortunate because if we did use it, there would never again be a question of whether functional/non-functional Studio Craft, or self-taught art, should be recognized as High Art.
This exhibition demonstrates the part of process that goes beyond the materials used - it reduces the hold of our critical slavery to materials in craft and presents the cognitive and spiritual essence of the work; its non-physical intentionality as the most important part of its process.
The mysterious edge, the Unexpected Edge, is not an abstraction of anything; it is not 'like' abstraction; it is not the Western concept of 'deliberate' abstraction or creation of symbols. It is the essence of abstraction itself. It is abstraction and we face the unexpected task of absorbing that Mystery without necessarily having an explanation of, or for it.
We feel that every artist in this exhibition has touched in some way this quality of Mysterious Beauty.
Media
Schedule
from October 22, 2011 to December 10, 2011