This presentation has two parts, the first part is about how these images
came to be and the second part is about the context of this exhibition
Part 1
How did these images you see here come to be?
In 1987 I began to investigate how illusion is created on a television screen in order to understand how illusion is created in general. At that time I used a video camera to capture my visual experiences and began to photorealistically copy these video stills in oil on canvas.
I playfully imitated the electronic way of image creation because I was overwhelmed by the rapid change in my field of vision and needed skilful means to record it.
I also needed to slow it down or pause it. It was imperative to recreate the experience in my studio because my ability to paint directly was too slow to keep up with the momentary changes in what I was experiencing. It was a very frustrating time.
I didn’t want to use photography because it’s just a cut through reality, a version that’s too frozen. I wanted to record the sequence of disappearing moments, the constant change in what I perceived, the flow of it.
The photos I took always had so much on them that I didn’t see at all, which was rather confusing.
I used a video camera to record my experiences. The blurriness of the video still was helpful for me when painting, to dissolve the shapes in color, to soften the boundaries of the shapes.
It was only much later, around 10 years later, since 1997, that my pictures were created without photographic aids, based on sketches and in direct perception in oil on canvas in direct opposition to my field of perception.
Examples from 2024 can be seen in this exhibition.
The TV screen images were the first time I realized how much our selfdeception constantly has a hold on us:
By wordlessly recreating how real reality looked on a simple TV screen and then recreating this illusion in oil on canvas, I contemplated how it works:
How can it seem so real when it is only light, basically white, red, green and blue.
I began to understand that my own perception is always a projection in the same way – a play of light, a film that I create and act on. Magical.
Unfathomable.
I wanted to make my process of realization accessible to others – illusion looking at illusion – and experience this again and again, by drawing, painting, in oil on canvas, in order to then share it with others.
These spectator images from 1989 have not yet been published and I am very happy to be able to share them with you this evening.
At the time, I was not at all familiar with Buddhist concepts of emptiness. But it became so clear to me that what we see has no inherent substance, that we are constantly deceiving ourselves, thinking that it is real, that what we see is actual. But it is fiction, created by our patterns of perception.
Each and every one of us creates a different world of phenomena of our own. It is a miracle that we can communicate and no wonder that there is so much misunderstanding, isn’t it?
Most of the time we only see what we think.
Painting, however, can be a process of arriving at a trans-conceptual way of perceiving. Just seeing, beyond the labels and concepts. Simply letting go of thinking in the face of the beauty and ugliness, the variety and density of
the vibrant change of our reality. Then mere seeing can happen without judgment and becomes a pure living experience.
A very good friend of mine calls it “non-identifying seeing”.
You can train it and it is very gratifying when you succeed
Shall we try it?
Ask participants to align themselves and to get involved and to look “I would like to invite you to sit quietly and comfortably for a few minutes and just look and when you start labelling drop it again and again”
When I was doing the spectator pictures in 1989, I was fascinated by a crowd of people watching a football game. All these people cheering, shouting, booing and joining in or just watching quietly.
They seem fascinated by what they see: a colorful scene, pulsating, alive, emotionally charged. But they look and forget that they are looking. They indulge and take sides and forget that it is just a game.
Aren’t we like them? Don’t we also forget most of the time that what we see is just a game of our own perception?
We are like them
Them is us
Looking at paintings is a chance to look and become aware of seeing, so that – for timeless moments free of concepts – pure seeing can happen without judgment and becomes a pure experience, a pure, living, conscious
experience.
Just look, see, feel, let all names pass by.
Let the seeing in the seeing.
Part 2
Here we see the pictures with the many spectators in the environment of pictures of great Buddhist masters and a large statue of the Buddha himself. How does that fit together?
According to Buddhist belief, there is only one difference between the enlightened beings, the so-called Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, and us:
They saw, recognized and realized their inherent wisdom nature, in our case this original wisdom is just as present, but we do not recognize it, or only sometimes and partially, and repeatedly fall victim to the deceptions of our perceptions.
They are aware of their perception and do not allow themselves to be deceived and have freedom of choice. We are not aware, do not use our innate freedom of choice and react habitually. As a result, we become entangled in endless mental spirals and the resulting chains of action to prove that we exist. But basically in terms of our nature there is no difference between them and us.
Basically we are like them
Them is us
In this sense of non-separation between us and those who have fully developed their potential, the central piece of this exhibition is a pencil drawing that we can see over there.
A portrait study of Khandro Tsering Chödron and the only portrait study that I have produced in the last 20 years.
Khandro Tsering Chödron is one of the greatest masters of the last century and I was very lucky to have been part of the team that looked after her in the last years of her life.
Watching her was like looking at the sky. Everything about her was completely natural, nothing artificial. Her quality of complete transparency was so strong that sometimes, when I was sitting next to her to look at a book together, I had to turn towards her to see if she was still there, if there was still someone sitting next to me.
Her eyes might move from one object to another, her ears might move from one sound to another, but her mind didn’t seem to follow, her mind was completely still and unmoving, unchanging.
Being in her environment was without a frame of reference. There was no support for self-identity. Everything fell away. I didn’t exist, just as she didn’t exist. Only complete mental freedom and clarity and deep silence, from her
side – for me it was often very unsettling, so much space, so much freedom, such deep silence.
According to Buddhist belief, the „I“ is an illusion as well, an accumulation, an ever-changing, intangible process, inherently empty of any substance, which we name and to which we give identity.
Pure fiction. The nonexistent essence of this fiction is, however, a primoridial cognitive ability, the ability to know. A fundamentally good, clear essence in the innermost part of our nonexistence, which knows its own selflessness. It is up to us to sense this essence, to be in contact with it and to realize it.
It is therefore up to us to practice being in contact with this compassionate potential of our own, free from neuroses and constraints, so that we become clear about the nature of things.
This potential of our mind can bear not to close itself around an object and make it a thing, it can simply see.
We can learn not to always automatically fall into belief or doubt, hope or fear.
We can learn to be able to see aspects that are unpleasant, ugly on the outside and inside, of others or of ourselves, knowing that it is not everything, that there is a greater way of seeing things.
There is an unhindered, amazingly respectful way of seeing the world, of seeing ourselves, of understanding what is happening, of seeing what is going on.
This pure, non-identifying seeing gives us the freedom of choice to respond in a way that creates grace and clarity and kindness, for ourselves and others. After all:
them is us