Being Empty | Chris Doris: The Ballinglen Museum of Art

10 June - 21 July 2023

Opening Event on June 10th, 4pm 

Opening remarks by Tommy Weir.

Chris Doris’ work has explored the nature of consciousness and transformation for 35 years, through a distinctive interweaving of his psychotherapeutic, art and contemplative practices.

 

In Being Empty he concludes a 15 year series of large scale Open Paintings.These layered elegant paintings instantiate the view that beyond the nihilistic ‘relative emptiness ‘ resulting from postmodernism’s valid and useful deconstructions, is a neglected but sustaining ‘absolute emptiness ‘.

 

Paintings on steel and aluminium with their hard surfaces, offer a different relational encounter to the large works on linen. Both invite open, attuned attention. All are informed by the understanding that the self is constructed relationally and that it is empty of inherent substance. It is a process, not a thing. Further, awareness of this allows access to an empty field state of openness and potential.

 

The paintings are accompanied by a one stroke mop calligraphy drawings which offer trace records of presence oriented to emptiness in flow.