Shunyata Improvisation Group PLAY A series of concerts inspired by 7 Zen Art Principles

Concert 7 Profound Subtlety (A hidden memory lingering deep inside, limitless implications)

+ Support from Zorya (Katie Oswell and Maria Sappho)

This concert focuses upon the Zen art aesthetic of Profound Subtlety. In discussions of Zen and art the concept of Profound Subtlety (Yugen) revolves around the ability of the creator to allow the viewer to complete the art work. The artist uses empty space to allow a richer appreciation of the work to allow the mind to resonate with the work. The feeling and intention of the piece is implied rather than stated.

The viewer nurtures the longing to appreciate all of the context ,history, future and process of an object of art. The art mirrors how we see nature with a multiplicity of reactions, feelings and understandings which are provisional and incomplete rather than defined.

“When looking at autumn mountains through mist, the view may be indistinct yet have great depth. Although few autumn leaves may be visible through the mist, the view is alluring. The limitless vista created in imagination far surpasses anything one can see more clearly” (Nancy Hume, Japanese Aesthetics and Culture)

“The mysterious grace of his ( Sesshū Tōyō (雪舟 等楊, c. 1420 – August 26, 1506), most celebrated landscape painting ( Splashed Ink Landscape) derives as much from the space that is left untouched, the invisible and absent (often referred to as the “dragon’s veins” of a painting) as from what is painted and visible. The work appears incomplete, still in the act of formation, and the dramatic negative spaces created by the mists allow the various forms to dissolve and blend into one another, but more decisively, according to the yūgen dynamic, this negativity invites the viewer into the painting to actively complete it.” (Graham Parkes and Adam Loughnane, Japanese Aesthetics)

Zorya
Zorya is a duo of two women, Maria Sappho and Katie Apple Oswell. As artists, activists, researchers, and makers of sounds the duo looks to incorporate the real aspects of our existence with magic and the surreal.

Zorya bring elements of ritual, the Divine Feminine and intuition to creative works that range from sonic, sculptural, and the absurd. Taking inspiration from folklore, astrology, and marginalised histories the duo work with forming new forms of metanarrative to reflect the real global enmeshment of human, nature, ecology and time.

Passing comment and reflecting societal fractures, Zorya protends to a world with deeper connection to its nature, it’s uncanny, it’s unbelievable and it’s feminine glory.