/bauddhamata

René's true family members, please stand up

2009-11-09T08:47:00.013+08:00

Or, THE DEATH OF THE RENÉ LAUBIES ESTATE COLLECTIONIt finally dawns on me how sadly disappointing and counter-productive the exécuteur testamentaire of the René Laubies Estate Collection has turned out to be.What would be the essential aims of maintaining an artist's estate?To preserve and protect the original properties,To acquire additional relevant works and facilities,To make certain that the

The White Peacock

2009-11-07T02:11:00.027+08:00

One autumn – it must have been 1985 or 6 – leading up to our winter meeting in Varkala, I wrote to René from Bangkok and asked him to bring me a French novel. When he got to Varkala he handed me a novel of DH Lawrence, "The White Peacock." I was disappointed. He said French novels were never translated well into English. I didn't read it. I should read it now!I remember in the autumn of 1989 when

This is what we call Nuagisme

2009-10-26T19:12:00.020+08:00

To live for the moment (as if that were sufficient) and allow the given to sway ones attention to the pleasures of the wind over sweat-laced bodies on silent beaches kissed by tides; to subsist on nothing and breathe thin air as droplets filtered through evanescent cloud streams - this is what we call Nuagisme.See Nuagisme

In Plaintive March with the Vanishing Spirits

2009-10-25T10:23:00.007+08:00

"In Plaintive March with the Vanishing Spirits" (2006), I decoded the ancient practice of alms bowl walking as something that was far more aesthetic than ascetic - something quintessential to "ascetic art." It was a sculpting installation of poetic movement - a muted recital of grimy footfall in plaintive march with the vanishing spirits as elapsing in the crumbling facade and veneer of a

the stain of sliding cloud and sea

2009-09-28T09:22:00.011+08:00

In starting to discuss the present work, we are immediately confronted by a dearth of terms insufficient to expound a highly poetic contemporary artist born in the crevasses of cultural hybridity and nourished in the no man's lands of ascetic transmutation. How to take up this exhilarating challenge and crack the artist's liminal appeal when standard terminology so deeply disappoints us? Here's a

the shorelines of perception

2009-09-25T16:09:00.003+08:00

I find it curious that the deep southern reach of the Malaya Peninsula constitutes the sole amphiscian zone across the entire Eurasian super-continent. In that torrid, tropical sun-drenched tract one encounters scores of basal registries strewn as arcs in chance arrangement: scuttled boats half-buried on a riverbank, driftwood drying on curves of beach; scattered whitecaps flagging the gaze to

"Beneath a thin flaking glaze"

2009-09-04T09:53:00.003+08:00

What I witness may more accurately be described as a scattered but insistent urge to assert a multiplicity of latent or half-forgotten processes, sentiments or forms that are superbly free of so-called Western historiological development—an analytical modeling that needs to be abandoned, i.e., as based on the coloring or performative embellishment of an implacable array of irrelevant exdogenous

The geniis of the margins

2009-08-28T09:34:00.009+08:00

My paintings are rather like sacrosanct texts of aesthetic quiescence and perceptive light. They must not be hidden away by collectors. They need to appear together in numbers and in varied combinations in order to irradiate their optimal values. As a countervailing ploy, I instill these works with jinxing forces ('the geniis of the margins') that progressively nudge to allay and enrich their

brackish sludge after evening rainstorm

2009-08-10T12:05:00.001+08:00

I find the term Buddhism more misleading than signifying. This is fortunate. The qualified statuses of its materials and processes far out weigh subjective concerns to the point where essentially no subject remains. Through strength in cropping one proceeds unattracted by any attempt at paradigmatic theorization.Morning fresh gutters of brackish sludge after evening rainstorm.Batu Pahat, Malaysia.

On Maintaining the Integrity of the Laubies Estate Collection

2009-07-19T21:45:00.011+08:00

The executeur testamentaire needs be made aware of his principle obligation: to properly maintain as an organized, integral and uncompromised whole, the René Laubies Estate Collection. It is only thereafter that the executeur testamentaire should even consider "representing" the estate—comprised of writings, art objects and miscellaneous artifacts. In this way only will the executeur

The reification of dawn's resolve

2009-06-30T21:11:00.031+08:00