Lewis deSoto

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Lewis deSoto: Paranirvana (self-portrait)

Organized by the Samek Art Gallery

October 27 – December 8, 2002

Oct. 27 4:00 p.m.: deSoto will present a lecture on his work. An illustrated four-color catalogue with essays on DeSoto's installation by independent curator and writer Helaine Posner, and on Paranirvana (self-portrait) by Stephanie Hanor, Assistant Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, will be published. Exhibition will travel nationally.

Paranirvana (self-portrait), is a 26 foot long Buddha, an air-filled and fan inflated sculpture made of air brushed polyethylene. Resting on his deathbed, this sculpture is inspired by a 42 foot stone Buddha at Gal Vihara Garden in Sri Lanka. In his sculpture, deSoto has replaced Buddha's face with his own. By doing so, deSoto portrays both himself and the reclining Buddha at the moment of death and supreme consciousness.

The sculpture is a provocative paradox. It is monumental yet empty; it depicts a massive and solid stone form but is as light as air and vulnerable; it portrays a divine being and is also a self-portrait; and it is Buddha at the moment between life and death, the last breath and at the first moment after life. At the end of each day, the fan is turned off and the sculpture deflates, losing all of its air. Each morning the fan is turned on and breathes air into the skin until it is full again, and it aurally fills the room with the hum of meditative breathing. This remarkable object, Paranirvana (self-portrait), was made when the artist was coming to terms with the recent loss of his father.

Lewis deSoto has exhibited extensively in the US and abroad. He has had solo exhibitions at the List Visual Arts Center, MIT, Cambridge, MA; Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Bill Maynes Gallery, New York; and Cheryl Haines Gallery, San Francisco, among others. Worcester Art Museum, MA: maintains studios in both San Francisco and New York. His installations have been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States as well as museums in England, Italy, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden. He is Professor of art at San Francisco State University.

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