Philadelphia museum of art runs an exciting exhibition through January 2009, named Photo Mandalas: Bill Armstrong, Milan Fano Blatny.
An aid to focus and meditation long used in Buddhist and Hindu religious practices, a mandala (literally "circle") is a schematic depiction of the divine palace or realm of a deity. More broadly, it is a visualization of the entire cosmos. While many historic mandalas are painted or drawn, a mandala can also be represented in sculpture, architecture, textile art, or even, in the case of this exhibition, as a photograph.
Photo Mandalas, a visually bold exhibition of more than thirty photographs, brings together two contemporary artists whose work has been inspired by the ancient form of the mandala. These photographic mandalas, made in color by Bill Armstrong (American, b. 1952) and in black-and-white by Milan Fano Blatny (Czech, b. 1972), are not meant specifically for sacred use, but are meant to inspire contemplation.
“The more you look at the image, the more you see,” Blatny writes about his dense, constructed images. “New worlds, new levels come up from the center of the picture and you can go deeper and deeper inside the image.”
Armstrong, by contrast, uses rings of saturated color to interpret the form: “The mandalas are meant to be meditative pieces – glimpses into a space of pure color, beyond our focus, beyond our ken. Their essential purpose is to create a sense of transcendence, of radiance, of pure joy!” -- www.philamuseum.org
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