Arlene Schechet

”Puja”, 2001

Cast iron Buddha, silver Buddha
rubber Ganesh, porcelain vase,
blue grass lotus, hand made goat skin case.
Edition 150, signed and numbered.

 9 000 SEK (incl. VAT)

”Buddha”, 2001

Sand-cast iron, height 5 cm.
Unlimited edition

1000 SEK (incl. VAT)

Buddhism at its core concerns transience. These editions, while they are very much real sculpture on a small scale–sculpture that you can put in your pocket–are made for travel, to be tucked away in one’s suitcase and set out on a window sill in a guest room, a bureau in a hotel room. Each piece is made from an earth-derived material. Tibetan scholars often say that when you are making an image of the Buddha, you are in fact making the Buddha. ”The Buddha,” Shechet says, ”is a reminder.”

Process is the essence of Shechet’s work. Her hydrocal sculptures, often abstractions of the Buddha or of elephant-headed Ganesh, are made without an armature, solidifying quickly as she works, while the paint on their surfaces is paint skins: she lifts the skin that forms on the surface and drapes it over the sculpture. The starting point for Shechet’s work always involves movement: that movement of making, the movement of images borrowed from a distant time and of those taken from a far geography. Her choice of blue and white porcelain as a subject links East and West, as familiar to both cultural traditions.