Upcoming Mandala Show At Art Times Two
“INFINITE INSPIRATION”: This digital print by Pamela Turczyn will be included in the upcoming art show, “MANDALA, locating self” at the Art Times Two gallery at Princeton Brain and Spine.
MANDALA, locating self will be on display from December 2016 through March 2017 at Art Times Two, the gallery at Princeton Brain and Spine. The gallery is within the offices at 731 Alexander Road, Suite 200. There will be a reception on Sunday, December 4 from 2-4 p.m. open to the public. After the opening, visits to the gallery are made by appointment, evenings and weekend days. For more information, call (609) 203-4622.
The Mandala show fits well at Art Times Two, a gallery within a medical office committed to the idea that experiencing visual art contributes to healing. Paintings and prints featuring mandalas from four regional artists are brought together in this exhibition both for their aesthetic intentions and for their power to promote a positive frame of mind. Associated with Hindu and Buddhist cultures where, consecrated and purposed for ritual, the mandala is understood to be the abode of the deity. A more general manifestation of the mandala, as Carl Jung has extensively noted, is as a form created symbolically to locate the self in the cosmos, and is presented as a circle with a center ubiquitously found across time and cultures. Neolithic concentric stone paintings, labyrinths, alchemists’ squared circles, rose windows of Christian cathedrals, the layout of medieval cities, the work of modern and contemporary artists all attest to this common human need for centering.
Marsha Levin-Rojer, Pamela Turczyn, Cathy Watkins, and Phyllis Wright reflect in different media on the power of the mandala in the exhibition entitled MANDALA, locating self. Levin-Rojer came to the mandala form through close observation of natural objects and discovered their underlying structure to be a mandala, which in turn became a significant inspiration in bodies of subsequent work. Turczyn’s work is built on the premises of sacred geometry and is made with the intention of eliciting specific responses from the viewer such as healing, compassion, and gratitude. Watkins has written that for her “the mandala relates to mapping, and this challenge of finding one’s way against a backdrop of uncertainty.” Wright acknowledges something she shares with her colleagues in the show that her art is a meditation, and that the mandala form connects her to the infinite sources of creation.