Andreea Saioc,

Editor (Art)

 

Never have I seen the words ‘Costa’, ‘when you recycle your old club card’, ‘New World’, ‘Tibet’ and ‘50p’, all in one place. This fresh and somewhat bizarre blend can be said to encapsulate artist Gonkar Gyatso’s creative genius – an inspired attempt to reinvent the iconic, expanding over a period of more than 20 years.

Gonkar Gyatso is a contemporary Tibetan-born British artist, who has lived and worked in the West ever since he moved to London in the late 90s, to continue his education. His art is exposed all around the world, in places as prestigious as the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA), the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (Israel), The Institute of Modern Art (Australia) or the Courtauld Institute of Art (London).

Gyatso’s work is a brilliant analytical account on human identity in transition that is continually shaped within the scenario of a monarch Western culture, with a wealth of bright references to globalization and consumerism. Gyatso’s creations are strongly anchored in the present and have a sense of fresh, media savvy type of wisdom,  with a mix of elements of tradition, spirituality and mainstream popular culture, all packaged in visually astonishing form. Looking at Gyatso’s art is like reading a brightly coloured anthology of some hundreds of exceptionally unlikely stories that somehow, by courtesy of the artist’s vision, seem to make perfect sense at the end of the day.

Gyatso’s art is essentially influenced by his upbringing. Living in a Tibet troubled by the Cultural Revolution, young Gyatso witnessed the destruction of all art forms that were not consistent with Mao’s ideology. He then saw how quickly can a culture shift and get poorer, and this influenced his decision to study traditional Chinese brush painting in Beijing as well as, years later, traditional Tibetan thangka, in India.  Gonkar’s sustained effort of giving raise to Tibetan art’s international profile went on as he founded the London-based, contemporary art gallery The Sweet Tea House, in 2004. The gallery features works of Tibetan artists regardless of their political stand, situation, background, and education  and it follows the first Sweet Tea House, the earliest Tibetan avant-garde artists’ association that Gyatso founded in Lhasa, in 1985.

Gyatso’s collages were exposed in the 2009 Venise Biennale, the 2009 Asia Pacific Triennial and the 2010 Biennale of Sydney.  The ‘Three Realms’ 2012 exhibition was made possible by the partnership among the Griffith University Art Gallery, the University of Queensland Art Museum and the Institute of Modern Art and was the artists’ first public gallery survey. Inaugurated on 25th February, the exposition was open to public until 29th April and it featured three exhibitions reflecting separate phases in Gyatso’s work. The first phase would be the period of time the artist studied in Beijing as a young and carefree Communist- auto-irony is the main ingredient for this particular portrayal; his return to Tibet and also to his roots, when he became an exiled artist in Dharamsala, India is the second phase and the period he moved to London for his studies and began to achieve international recognition represents the last phase.

Gyatso’s art revolves heavily around Buddhist iconography and exploits its famed status within the Western world. He combines elements of mainstream pop culture with traditional Tibetan symbols in a dense web that has its own form, usually that of Buddha’s statue. His art is mainly a statement about the danger of the loss of marginal cultures, while absorbed in the larger, media saturated, West dominated culture. Even more, by means of his art’s form, with dense collages made of vividly coloured stickers, cut-out written captions, cartoon characters and branding logos, the artist sends a somewhat visual message: that each culture, while seen from afar, takes the form of its most iconic symbols, such as the image of Buddha. However, the closer you get, the more this world unfolds before your eyes, looking more alive and real than bare stereotypes.

Gyatso’s criticism works both ways. He might say the world as we see it now, with brands and consumer products, is ultimately included in spirituality and religion, aspect that is graphically shown in that the contour of Buddha’s statue is taking in popular culture elements of daily life. Or, as journalist John McDonald notices, Gyatso’s art might also suggest even such ancient traditions, as Buddhism needs to adapt to current cultural norms.