EXHIBITION OVERVIEW

By Peter Frank

It might seem surprising that a spiritual teacher so conversant with ancient tradition would now turn to the newest, most advanced technologies to fabricate—indeed, to formulate—his art. But, for Adi Da Samraj, tradition is not orthodoxy. Spiritual insight, like artistic vision, transcends issues of media and discipline, directing the most appropriate means to the delivery of the message.

Transcendental Realism: The Art of Adi Da Samraj, the Collateral Exhibition at 2007 Venice Biennale, is housed on two expansive floors of a beautiful landmark building, within easy access from most locations in the city.
(photo at right)

It is open to the public from 10 June through 21 November 2007, Tuesdays through Sundays between the hours of 10.00 am and 6.00 pm.

In this exhibition, we see Adi Da's "echoed patterning" approach to the photographed images of things (and people) in the works of the Spectra series, occupying the center room. The outer rooms feature work of the various Geome series—the first works of Adi Da Samraj in which the imagistic components have been wholly generated by digital means—and works from the Oculus series, in which Adi Da Samraj combines digitally manipulated photographic elements with digitally generated imagery.

This, of course, was Paul Cézanne's approach over a century ago; and, among other things, Adi Da Samraj pays homage in his work to the great Modernist experiment of the early twentieth century, with its breakaway from traditional perspective, its liberating idea of abstraction, and its free treatment of color. But Adi Da Samraj also challenges the dialectical fundaments of Modernist philosophy. In his binary structures and mirrored images, Adi Da Samraj reveals not an array of opposites, but a play of reflections. Opposites in reality exist in synthesis. Duality is illusory, he teaches. Existence is unitary. Our subjective, ego-driven "point of view" does not define existence; whether or not we know or admit it, it defines us.

My images are about how Reality Is—and they are also about how Reality appears, in the context of natural perception, as a construction made of primary shaping-forces. My image-art is, therefore, not merely "subjectively" or, otherwise, "objectively" based. Rather, the images I make and do always tacitly and utterly coincide with Reality As It Is. Therefore, I have called the process of the image-art I make and do Transcendental Realism.

Adi Da Samraj