I am life and death.  I am east and west.  I am so old and so young.  I just walked out of the Rubin Museum of Art and I feel like something else.

Located in the Chelsea neighborhood, the Rubin specializes in showcasing pieces from the Himalayas and its surrounding regions.  The Rubin introduces to its New York audience a very foreign, seemingly esoteric world of art.  (As if the art world so close to home wasn’t esoteric enough, right?)  But by virtue of its very existence the museum neatly exemplifies the ‘unity of opposites’ that plays such an important role in Buddhism: the Rubin shows us that we, east and west, are actually one and that there is an endless amount of connections between eastern and western artwork, however opposite they may seem.

So it is interesting, but not surprising at all, that the Rubin is currently hosting an exhibit called Tradition Transformed: Tibetan Artists Respond. The artists within this exhibit outline the tensions as well as the harmony between old and new, east and west.  In this way, the exhibit is perfectly situated at the Rubin.  Nine artists are featured there: Dedron, Gonkar Gyatso, Losang Gyatso, Kesang Lamdark, Tenzin Norbu, Tenzin Rigdol, Pema Rinzin, Tsherin Sherpa and Penba Wandu.  You may not recognize these artists because it’s rare that contemporary eastern artists get recognition in western institutions.  The Rubin can proudly state that this the first time contemporary Tibetan art has been showcased in any New York City museum. Well, I say, it’s about time, because these artists are groundbreakingly hot.

The artists featured in the show are confronting issues NOW.  Individually and collectively they know no bounds: they touch upon the personal, the political, and the cultural issues we all wrestle with.  But Tibet especially is a hotbed for political debate and confusion.  It has been a sanctuary for faithful followers of the Buddhist religion for years.  China claims it has had sovereignty over the land for all of those years.  The Dalai Lama disagrees and had to flee.  The country must now confront the dizzying, modern world of globalism.  And all this takes place in what used to be the breadbasket of Asia, alongside the greatest mountains in the world.  One can imagine that there is no end to the issues that Tibetan artists could confront in their work.  The nine artists in Tradition Transformed leave no stone unturned and, almost unconsciously, they work under the sway of the union of opposites.  Issues aesthetic and otherwise are dealt with in pairs: dada and academicism, life and death, depth and shallowness, faith and sin, confusion and boredom, old and new, home and exile, and, of course, east and west.

Some artists display their distaste or uneasiness for the state of current affairs, while others embrace it, while still other are ambiguous about their feelings or don’t directly address political issues.  Nonetheless, all the pieces are extremely self-expressive, which often feels like a rare find in more traditional Tibetan art.  Several of the pieces are quite exceptional.

Kesang Lamdark’s “O Mandala Tantric” is just one example.  Neon light shines through a darkened reflective glass.  Illuminated images, created by holes that allow the light to shine through, float in the large and reflective, black, circular mass.  The images, modern and ancient, of pornography, karma sutra, and violence, encircle a ring of skulls. In the middle of that ring lies what looks like the part of a more traditional mandala.  The whole piece works beautifully and coherently.  If this neon mandala is supposed to inspire the same meditative state in a modern viewer that a traditional mandala would inspire in a Buddhist monk, it has fulfilled its purpose.  A single seat is appropriately placed in front of this mandala and it was so appealing; I sat there for a good ten seconds simply absorbing the piece.  The message is clear, simple: birth and death, sex and skulls, light and dark.  Think what you may, to me it was obvious that these opposites are not very different from each other.  Lamdark successfully gives us a modern version of the old spirituality.  A placard mentioned something about how the light from the mandala might remind one of the kitschy neon lights often displayed in Chinese restaurant windows.  Aren’t the little details what make art so interesting?  That’s exactly what the Rubin is meant to do, and often does: show you what you may never have noticed otherwise.

A similar balance of opposites is displayed in Lamdark’s other pieces: used, metal cans are perforated on their bottoms with images of deities or naked women.  Upon looking through the cans, visitors will see that the images are illuminated by natural light.  There the trashy and the holy meet.  Lamdark puts it best himself: “as the lotus flower grows out of mud as [a] symbol of enlightenment, I try to transform the useless can into [a] piece of art.”

Another artist featured in the exhibit also brought an interesting and more aesthetically-based light to how the western and eastern worlds have now collided thanks to immigration and globalization.  Rinzin was trained in the traditional thangka style of Buddhist painting, and this is evident in his paintings though not right away.  His interest in modern art led him to create two pieces called “Energy and Peace #1” and “Energy and Peace #2.”  Both will remind its New York audience of not only modern artwork by the likes of Klee or Kandinsky but also grafitti and street art.  Shapes and lines that can sometimes be identified as the air or water one might see in a traditional Buddhist painting, bend and twist around patterns that imitate Asian textiles.  Bright, neon colors fill the background. Rinzin creates depth and texture in his contemporary, western abstraction of traditional, Tibetan forms.  The shapes float.  The colors pop.  The paintings point to the common themes in eastern and western aesthetic.  They showed me that the movement of energy and peace exist in both eastern and western artwork and that they can work harmoniously in one painting.  The coming together of these two worlds and their artwork, thanks to new technology and communication, is a beautiful one.

Not all the artists are quite so clear or so positive about this new globalized world however, and Gonkar Gyatso is the perfect example of such an ambiguous painter.  I like most of the painting in the exhibit but if I had to pick a favorite I’d probably lean towards Gonkar Gyatso.  His painting, to put it simply, just looks cool.  The bright, poppy, various, rainbow colors emanating from a multitude of kitschy, sparkling Chinatown stickers create the shape of a holy and recognizable icon – the Buddha himself.  The piece is extremely attractive, perhaps especially for my age; it’s very candy-colored.  (Another piece by Sherpa, which features a brightly, multi, candy-colored skull with two cartoonish bodhisattvas in front of a dazzling gold background, is equally attractive and I’m guess it’s of no coincidence that this painting sits right across Gyatso’s pieces in the gallery.)  But what makes Gyatso’s pieces even more attractive are the many layers of meaning and interpretation that lie there, waiting to be discovered, begging to be discussed.

Immediately, upon seeing these works I chuckled a bit.  I’ll admit that.  But perhaps that’s because humor is a big part of Gyatso’s work.  It is tradition transformed indeed!  It has the instant appeal of a commercial painting that draws the viewer in.  Once the viewer starts to look deeper into the painting, he will see that the grid lines that are used to make a traditional Buddha are still visible.  There are a lot of questions here.  But where are the answers?  Is Gyatso making fun of art or is he simply making a note of it?  The stickers are mostly light-hearted and fun, mixed in there with commercial headlines and sales ads.  Are these creating the holy form or invading him?  Is globalization and commercialization good or bad for an ancient and holy religion?  These questions create the tension in Gyatso’s union of two seemingly opposite human creations– the commercial and the religious.

It’s important to stress how open the interpretation of all the pieces within this exhibit can and should be.  There are several right answers and very few wrong ones.  The museum makes sure to lay the facts out for you so that your interpretation is informed but interpretations, especially of these contemporary works, are never set in stone.  That’s what I love about the Rubin, why I sometimes prefer it over other museums that are bigger or have been around longer: the Rubin is an educational institution in the fullest sense.  The placards, the brochures, the booklets, and the tours really help visitors dive into and fully understand ideas they may never have heard of otherwise.  After my visits there, I think that Himalayan art is anything but esoteric.  Both the museum and the exhibit are successfully bringing its New York audience closer to a world on the other side of the planet. Tradition Transformed: Tibetan Artists Respond closes on October 18th. Hurry and go see it!