The Shadow Mandala

Silk Screen and Mixed Media

24 x 24 inches

With Frame

1/1

2016

“Shadow Mandalas”

Art has the ability to connect mankind. With this in mind, I embarked on a series of Mandala pieces utilizing silkscreens done during my Banff Centre residency. The resulting mixed media pieces took on a life of there own and became anti-mandalas or what I call ‘Shadow Mandalas’. Reflecting the skewed nature of the world and the ever-present futility we as a nation and species are now embroiled in.

The intersection between science and religion is one that fascinates me and permeates our current world both politically as well as socially. The circle is a universal symbol with extensive meaning in both science and religion. It represents the notions of totality, wholeness, original perfection, the Self, the infinite, eternity, timelessness, all cyclic movement.

These artworks conjure a likeness of Tibetan mandalas and utilize charcoal, coal dust, 22k gold leaf, and newspaper test prints Another fundamental component of art is its ability for social commentary and historic documentation. This is done not only through the imagery, but the materials, and the visual voice evident in the final piece.

The raw images are from my collaboration with a physicist and time spent at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), in Switzerland. The silkscreen was made from a composite photograph of the CMS derived from 220 high res images composited together. The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) is a general-purpose detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The Large Hadron Collider at CERN is the world's largest and most complex scientific instrument to study the basic constituents of matter – the fundamental particles.