Transformational Visions, a new exhibit opening Friday, September 6, 6:30 p.m., in the Hudson Gallery at ICON, includes a small selection of Shiva Linga paintings juxtaposed with modern abstract photographs. “We have chosen to present just a few select works of art in order to encourage viewers to spend time contemplating each of them in depth,” says ICON Director Bill Teeple.
This exhibition was partly inspired by the description for an earlier exhibition of the Hudson collection of anonymous Shiva Linga paintings at Arcadia University: “Despite their expression of an unbroken, centuries-old tradition, these paintings seem both timeless and utterly contemporary, possessing a remarkable affinity with examples of 20th-century abstract art. These paintings are part of a distinct visual lexicon that confounds assumed differences between East and West, the spiritual and the aesthetic, the ancient and the modern.”
The exhibition includes two creative explorations of alternative photographic processes by master photographer Frederick Sommer, an experimental photogram by influential photographer and educator Henry Holmes Smith, an early Tantra-inspired photograph by David T. Hanson, a photograph of a tattered Devi poster in Varanasi by Mark Paul Petrick, and a recent abstract “Suryagram” by Scott Morgan.
ICON Gallery is located 58 N. Main Street in Fairfield. For more information, email iconbillteeple@gmail.com.