Review by Mitchell Oldham.
Social consciousnesss is at the core of Wrightwood 659’s approach to the art it chooses to display. Since its debut in 2018, the private non-commercial gallery has consistently presented exhibitions that use the aesthetic beauty of art to interpret and comment on social realities that concern us all. Keeping their scope wide, past exhibitions have included photography that reveals the interior lives of America’s invisible, Japanese paintings that make us re-examine our thoughts on social isolation, and architecture in India that’s both altruistic and plausible.
The gallery’s two new exhibitions stay consistent with its intent to let artists talk about what’s pressing in their lives and communities through their craft. Ambitious and stunningly beautiful, the larger more encompassing show, Reimagine: Himalayan Art Now, finds its inspiration in the past. Twenty-eight artists take the belief systems, deities and emblems of their cultural past and “reimagine” them in a contemporary context. The reimagining isn’t literal. Artists translate the significance of often ancient ideals and principles by showing how they have relevance in societies grappling with dilemmas—uniquely 21st century dilemmas. Many of the artists, whose roots are in Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan and countries nearby, are now members of a diaspora who, for many reasons, no longer live in their countries of origin. Their deep connections to their homelands are often chiefly psychological and influenced by their status as emigres. Other artists represented in the exhibition continue to live in their native lands.
Photo by Michael Tropea
Bhutan’s Asha Kama Wandi captures the tenor of the exhibition with his towering sculpture of cloth, The Windhorse (Lungta), which greets you upon entering the gallery. Made up of hundreds of prayer flags that he found “strangling trees and littering the country’s landscape,” The Windhorse acts as conservation effort, artistic achievement and harbinger. The flags are symbols originally intended to bring luck and protection, but their proliferation was having a negative impact on the environment by badly soiling the region’s mountains. In Wandi’s view, the flags were in the end manifesting themselves as metaphors for greed. His sculpture reminds us of their detrimental cost. Part of his inspiration for creating the piece were the woodblocks that have been used for centuries to print prayers on the flags. One of them, dating from between the 15th and 19th centuries, accompanies his piece.
Like most of the other artifacts representing items from the region’s cultural heritage, the woodblock was provided courtesy of New York’s Rubin Museum of Art. The Rubin also premiered Reimagine: Himalayan Art Now at its Chelsea location in March.
Radical shifts of perspective are commonplace throughout the exhibition, which tremendously heightens its dramatic energy. The cultural legacy of South Asia, the birthplace of Buddha and rich in fascinating tradition, surges with scintillating complexity. Much of that colorful intricacy shines in this show. It comes through playfully in Tenzin Gyurmey Dorjee’s Chants of a Monkey Mind, a painting that chronicles a sliver of his life in India as a second-generation displaced Tibetan. The piece captures a scene on a local bus packed with people, a typical transportation experience for him in his adopted country. Incorporated in the painting are representations of two symbolic objects he chose to include from the Rubin Museum’s collection. One is a Bhutanese monkey mask intended to represent his loyalty to the Indian people for their generous welcoming of Tibetans who were forced to resettle there. The other is a Tibetan thighbone trumpet used as a ritual item for “cutting through ego.”
Shushank Shrestha’s Male Guardian Dog and Female Guardian Dog, both completed in 2023, initially strike the eye with light fancy before the mind grasps the seriousness of their symbolism. Shrestha was long fascinated by the potent ferocity of the metal snow lions protecting the entrances to places of significance like palaces and monasteries and chose to personalize their purpose by applying their intent to his home. Rather than lions, he creates oversized ceramic sculptures of his dogs, Zinc and Kaolin, giving them a vibrant glaze, bright colors, and a third eye symbolizing a higher consciousness. Standing next to their century-old inspirations, they look both whimsical and comical. The common link between the snow lions of antiquity and the artist’s guardian dogs is the sense of comfort and assurance they engender.
Other works carry the weight of apprehension as they contemplate the steady and ominous encroachment technology is having upon the world,. Roshan Pradhan’s New World completed in 2021 is a lush, riveting painting of the coupling of a robot and a human. Finely detailed and carrying the aesthetic gravitas of an old-world masterpiece, the painting suggests that such unions may have the capacity to create progeny and hints at the shift in power such offspring might portend. Pradhan uses the 14th century copper sculpture of the intimate union of a divine couple, Chakrasamvara and his consort Vajravarahi, as his conceptual muse for the piece. That artifact stands alongside his painting and serves to heighten the artist’s message of caution.
Nearby, another of Pradhan’s works, Energy, takes a slightly less alarmist stance. The painting shows how Garuda, in his embodiment as “the preserver of cosmic order,” has the power to vanquish any attempted domination by robots or technology and preserve humankind.
The spectrum of themes, concepts and artistic mediums represented in Reimagine is staggering and endlessly captivating. Eighteen of the art pieces were commissioned specifically for this exhibition, adding the kind of depth and cavalcade of alternative viewpoints that make the show remarkable.
Another exhibit, John Akomfrah: Four Nocturnes, transfixes with its quiet solemnity and radical beauty. Akomfrah, a British-Ghanaian filmmaker and artist, employs a multi-screen installation to focus on the tri-headed hydra of colonialism, climate change and migration on the African continent. Using primarily archival footage, the 52-minute immersive experience provides a new vision and understanding of all those things in an atmosphere that’s both meditative and conducive to mindful reflection. Whether you spend two or 52 minutes with the presentation, you’ll long be marked by its power. Another of his works, over 1,000 plastic jugs suspended from the ceiling leading to Four Nocturnes’ screening room, is also a commentary on the perilous cost of the perpetual degradation of our environment. Infused with an eerie light reminiscent of the pale orange of simmering embers, Akomfrah’s Toxic Cloud is both coarse and serene in its otherworldly beauty. It’s also unequivocal in its message.
Both exhibitions, Reimagine: Himalayan Art Now and John Akomfrah: Four Nocturnes are journeys to surprising, engrossing and ultimately thrilling places that marvel the eye and intrigue the mind. They turn art into discovery while highlighting the boundless creativity that flows from human imagination.
Reimagine: Himalayan Art Now and John Akomfrah: Four Nocturnes continue through February 15, 2025, at Wrightwood 659, 659 W. Wrightwood Ave. Gallery hours are Friday 12-7 pm and Saturday 10am-5pm. Tickets are $15 and must be purchased in advance; they are valid only for the day and time reserved.
Mitchell Oldham, a self-acknowledged culture vulture, has been enjoying writing about Chicago's dynamic arts scene for over a decade.
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