By the standards of the near future, Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook might be recognized as the lone pioneer in unexplored frontiers. Now, however, to us, raised as we are on less probing machines of relatively petty reveries, the unlikely blessing of her mega-fresh art will inevitably be underappreciated. Her latest retrospective at Sculpture Center is nearly over. My interests in cinesexuality and Zen Buddhism meet in my spectatorial relationship with her work. Zen (which is no more inextricably linked to Buddhism than “method” is to Methodism, really) is her work’s most powerful ally. Zen, writes R. H. Blyth, “means doing anything perfectly, making mistakes perfectly, being defeated perfectly, hesitating perfectly, having a stomach-ache perfectly, doing anything, perfectly or imperfectly, Perfectly.” Her practice discloses the ocean-roses of an internally fertile person. They’re no less multifaceted than they are clear. Nurses of disclosure, her works are broth for heads made less-than-well by the melancholy merchants of ephemeral contentment. I was excited to see some of the show online. Her recent pieces, which delve into dogs’ ontology, include sculptures of the dogs Rasdjarmrearnsook cares for, who were strays before she took them in. Little seems more odd or lovely to me than this: that so humorous and pleasurable, and personal a performer also presents new and breathtaking notions of what it means to be human now, reaching not for eternity but for the present, our present, this present's bliss present; present after present; thrill gift after thrill gift; for ever and ever; amen.
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