Bridge Projects exhibition: Here After
Candlesticks II on view in Here After at Bridge Projects in LA, May 7- July 30, 2022.
Hope for paradise has sparked the imagination of humankind across history and many religions. Here After is a group exhibition featuring artworks that delve into this imagination, exploring various religious or metaphysical positions, suppositions, or questions.
From Pure Land Buddhism’s chant “Namu Amida Butsu” (“I take refuge in Amida Buddha”) to Christianity’s prayer for the Kingdom to be “on earth as it is in heaven,” the concepts of paradise are as diverse as those who hope for it. For millennia, artists have been depicting the various contours of this hope, and their work continues, informing the contemporary artists featured in Here After. Engaging an ontology of peace, their work dwells upon our shared yearning for all that is good. Some shroud this hope in the mists of a distant future, but these artists bring eternity into close, immediate proximity—as though we are living in it now. We may not see it, but what we see is not all there is.