Brooklyn Zen Center | A New York City Soto Zen Buddhist Temple
Thunder and Lightening

Creating art can be similar to meditation. Both practices contain feelings of confinement and freedom and a sense of exposure. Stemming from this nakedness, commitments to art and to zazen (sitting) have another deep affinity; here all emotions and all manifestations of oneself are welcome. On zafu (cushion) as on paper, one tries not to turn away from ugliness, beauty, confusion, or fear. Maybe this is why Gertrude Stein famously said “art isn’t everything, it’s just about everything,” and why Teah Strozer, senior teacher at the Brooklyn Zen Center, called the zendo (meditation hall) a place to “be everything.” Maybe this is why so many members of the Brooklyn Zen Center are artists of some kind. “Thunder and Lightening” is an auspicious show because it marks the opening of a new space for the Boundless Mind Temple. 505 Carroll Street is Brooklyn Zen Center’s third location and first non-domestic space. Its larger scale and unique design suggest that this is a place for a growing community to branch out. One branch of this new space is a wall that is perfect for contemplating artworks. “Thunder and Lightening” highlights the sangha (community) who built this new practice space in Brooklyn. Not surprisingly, the seven works hang harmoniously together on the wall. As a catalyst for this show, artists were first asked “What is the thunder and lightning of your mediation practice?” So these seven pieces are not easy works. Each work contains (differently) a measure of pain; a scary place characterized by the dark BOOM of thunder and acute/lethal energy of lightning. Ready to accept any weather condition, these seven artists did not shy away when the rolling clouds descended. But then something happened. In an email typo worthy of Marcel Duchamp himself, “lightning” was misspelled as “lightening” which means the lifting of a heavy burden or perhaps a sky filling with light at the end of a storm. Look for this too in the seven works, and also in the mediation practice that goes on in the same space. -Noah Fischer Artists in Thunder and Lightening (on the wall from left to right) Alisa Malinovich Claudia Viera Yoko Ohashi Elisa Soliven Grady Gerbracht Maria Wallace Noah Fischer Alisa Malinovich (I fully disavow) All My Ancient Twisted Karma acrylic on Canvas, 2010 The image was inspired by Noah's suggestion of Thunder and Lightening - "What is the thunder and lightening of your sitting practice?" he asked. After a while, it came to me. All my ancient twisted karma, twirling about in a spiral! May it be looked at, and laughed at, and gently, fully, disavowed. ----------------------------------------- Claudia Viera Untitled#27 [Architectural Topographies] charcoal on paper, 2003 Since 2001 I have been using a single continuous line as a metaphor for the living experience. From small works on paper to monumental site specific spatial meditations. They are ultimately an imprint of time passing. This particular conception of drawing instead of being a sketch of an idea or a representation of an object, is rather, in the very moment of its generation, a record of lived time. The work spreads an extension of the body and the mind. The intention is to stimulate the viewer to look around and recognize their immediate surroundings to experience a fluid process of self awareness. A kind of a wrap/skin that expands its physical dimensions providing an image of time, presence, existence and reality. ------------------------------- Yoko Ohashi Untitled medium- ball point pen, 22" x 29," 2007 The drawing was originated from doodling with a pen. At first there was the cozy intimacy of drawing small, just like sitting and breathing comfortably. But then all the sudden, bursts of energy overtook the hand in big spiraling motions.. Excitement and fear came to me since it was a place unknown. I remember going back to breaths, which kept the experience very joyful. -------------- Elisa Soliven Untitled, oil on wood, 2010.------------------------------ Grady Gerbracht Untitled from the Bovine Collaborations series digital C print mounted on Sintra Bovine Collaborations engages steers as collaborative partners in the creation of images. The co-authored works are separated into three categories, Feces, Urine and Mud, which highlight aesthetic aspects of the three “media byproducts” left behind when the steers are gathered, weighed and transported to slaughter. I have captured strangely beautiful images of incidental marks my unwitting collaborators have drawn with their horns in the fecal matter their bodies spread onto the walls of the transport trucks. I select and recontextualize portions of these bovine productions that have the potential to be formally or conceptually tied to traditions of art produced by various avant-garde movements in modern and contemporary art history. ------------------------------------ Maria S. Wallace Custom oil on canvas, 23” x 17,” 2010 This is a picture of plasma lightning which is associated with volcanic activity. Studying such lightning is leading scientists to investigate the theory that core eruptions are triggered by electricity rather than pressure. I am in a bad state for making art because I don't know what I am doing. Everything turns out clumsier than I think and I don't see it doing much for me. That is why I make only practice art and no actual art. In this picture the volcano is being with people and trees. ---------------------------------------- Noah Fischer Untitled Laptop #7 ink on dura-lar with painted wood frame, 20" X 25, 2009 At one point I was startled to realize that more than half of my awake time was spent sitting in front of a purring little silver machine. I wanted to explore the “interface” between my laptop and myself through drawing in the hopes of at least bringing greater mindfulness to this condition. In this series of drawings, I laid a sheet of clear film over the apparatus, and began to trace each key, each physical element, and each open window on the LCD screen with ink and a small brush. So now the hours were spent attending to the machine itself. Each drawing in this series took its own direction from this starting point. -----------------------------------------