Over at Jeff’s Travel’s we read:
Pema Rinzin is one of the only Tibetan artists that I know who has trained in the traditional way of “tangka” and mural painting and that has also successfully transitioned into contemporary painting while still creating and teaching the so-called traditional art.
Jeff, ever emphasizing the importance of Buddhism’s visual culture (apparently, we don’t publish enough of it), let’s us know that a show featuring Pema’s and other contemporary Tibetan painters’ work will be opening at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City on June 11. You can find more of Jeff’s thoughts on Pema’s work here. But don’t expect a lot of theory. As Jeff writes:
I want to see a work of art where the more I look at the piece the more I see, and the more time I spend with the piece, the more time I want to spend – like a visual feast. I want to feel it from the inside and if someone has to explain it to me – then I have obviously missed it, or maybe it wasn’t there in the first place. For me, art that has to be explained in order to be understood and appreciated is not great art – it is only a visual-intellectual statement.
You can learn more about the upcoming exhibition “Tradition Transformed: Tibetan Artists Respond,” here.