[Click on poster for enlargement]

Sundaram Tagore Gallery
9606 South Santa Monica Blvd
Beverly Hills, CA 90210

Sections on this page:

• Press Release from the Sundaram Tagore Gallery
• Features related to the Exhibition
• The Sundaram Tagore Gallery Exhibition: Art Panel (Oct. 5, 2011)
• The Sundaram Tagore Gallery Exhibition: After the Opening
• The Sundaram Tagore Gallery Exhibition: Opening Night (Sep. 8, 2011)
• The Sundaram Tagore Gallery Exhibition Before Opening
• Orpheus and Linead: the Image-Art
• Preparing for the Exhibition

Press Release from The Sundaram Tagore Gallery

Beverly Hills, August 8, 2011 — Adi Da Samraj is known for his monumental works meant to draw viewers into an ecstatic experience and connect them to a higher spiritual truth. Since his participation in the 2007 Venice Biennale, the late American-born artist has commanded a large international following. This exhibition, called Orpheus and Linead, curated by the renowned Italian critic and art historian Achille Bonito Oliva (director of the 45th Venice Biennale), comprises 7 works on aluminum. Each image is a geometric abstraction composed of the three primary colors and black and white. The exhibition premiered in September 2010 at Sundaram Tagore Gallery in New York.

Adi Da (1939-2008) graduated from Columbia University in New York in 1961 with a BA in philosophy and from Stanford University in 1966 with an MA in literature. His thesis was on modernism, Gertrude Stein, and painters of the same period. He began making art in the early 1960s, in the form of photography and calligraphic brush painting. In the last decade of his career, he worked to move beyond the single-point perspective that dominates the canon of Western art. By transcending single-point perspective, which he equated with egocentricism, he sought to invite viewers into a space devoid of ego. Curator Achille Bonito Oliva explains: "The abstraction of Adi Da Samraj is anti-rhetorical and aspires to restore humanity to a state of contemplation and reflection. . . His abstract images look upon the world from beyond any point of view."

Over the course of his artistic career, Adi Da embraced technology, which he valued for the precision, aesthetic freedom, and non-painterliness it allowed. For this body of work, Adi Da began by photographing a chair, a bicycle, and a bird in flight. He then made digital compositions of geometric shapes inspired by his photographs. Once completed, the first drawing served as the basis for the next work as he sought to progressively abstract his images. Thus each subsequent image was a further distillation of the previous one.

Adi Da’s digital drawings were informed by a complex vocabulary of forms, colors, and spiritual concepts. He used two major visual elements in each work, which he called lineads and geomes. Lineads are hand-drawn gestural marks and curvilinear lines; geomes are solid geometric shapes. There is a momentum that takes place as the lineads uncoil upon the harmoniously positioned blocks of colors or the geomes. Together these forms unite to create a sense of dynamism and movement within the drawings.

In the final stage of Adi Da’s unique process, the drawings were sent to a top fabrication studio to be transformed, in a painstaking and elaborate process, into large-scale works composed of lacquer pigment on aluminum.

The 2011 Orpheus and Linead exhibition is accompanied by a beautiful new catalog, which includes an essay by Achille Bonito Oliva, and 20 full-color images from the Orpheus and Linead Suites, alongside dozens of photos of Adi Da at work on the Suites, as documented by Ruchiradama Nadikanta.

Features Related to the Exhibition
Read Artweek.LA's Cover Story and Artist Profile for the week of September 5, 2011, by journalist Craig Stephens, features the Image-Art of Adi Da Samraj.
Read Installation Magazine's "Galleries Installed" review of this exhibition.
Read the Huffington Post article by Bill Bush, Publisher of Artweek.LA: Wake Me Up When September Ends: This Artweek.LA (September 5-11, 2011).
Read the Adidam Revelation Magazine's feature article on this exhibition.
To celebrate Adi Da's Image-Art, The Dawn Horse Press is making this special offer: now through the end of the exhibition (October 8), receive 20% off on Adi Da’s image-art books.

The Sundaram Tagore Gallery Exhibition: Art Panel

Art Panel: Orpheus in the Modern World — The later work and aesthetic philosophy of Adi Da Samraj was the subject of discussion between Los Angeles art writers and those close with the late artist and spiritual teacher. (Facebook Event Page)

Moderator: Peter Frank

Panelists:
Bill Bush (Founder of Artweek.LA)
Shana Nys Dambrot (writer/curator)
Gary Coates (author, professor of Architecture at Kansas State University)
Stanley Hastings (Co-Director of Da Plastique)

When:
Wednesday, October 5, from 7:00pm - 8:00pm.

Where:
Sundaram Tagore Gallery Beverly Hills
9606 S. Santa Monica Blvd
Beverly Hills, CA

The Sundaram Tagore Gallery Exhibition: After the Opening

The Sundaram Tagore Gallery Exhibition: Opening Night

Inside the Gallery

Inside the Gallery

Inside the Gallery

Orpheus and Linead: The Image-Art

photos courtesy of DaPlastique

This exhibition includes a newly fabricated Orpheus One piece:

The Spiritual Descent of The Bicycle Becomes The Second-Birth of Flight: Part Twelve – II, 5, from Orpheus One 2007, 2011 – Lacquer on aluminum, 60 x 60 inches / 152 x 152 cm © 2011 ASA

Preparing for the Exhibition

photos courtesy of DaPlastique