"QUASI-MANDALA" Open from the Gaps of Dharma in the Universe

On one side, there is the aesthetics of global pop culture, brought about by the worldwide development of media. And on the other, there is Buddhist symbolism that has been cultivated for over 2000 years. From the subtle contact of both of these sides, Yukihisa Hirabayashi's art is born.

Among the whole of everyday things covered by globalization today, art's globalization is also advancing, and the diversity of the various places around the world differ in style and aesthetics, then the creative work that appears is also based on that. It adds more difficulty day by day to definite such a situation with specific period style. And it means that, for the side of creation, the idea of past avant-garde to lead the whole age by presenting a specific aesthetics, becomes nostalgic dreams.

On the other hand, market dynamics, strengthened together with the market's globalization, becomes the new bond for individual creation and appreciation. Globalization uncovers unknown values and things of different nature, but the variety that appears there is limited to the role on one stage, and that's how it is. The transgressions of avant-garde are deconstructed inside the reality of the market's created fashions. That has become a restriction and a condition of today's art scene.

In those times, Yukihisa Hirabayashi, who was brought up in the family lineage of a Shingon Buddhist temple, also experienced the sensations like pop music, manga, and TV commercials. Yet he was nourished with knowledge in Buddhism and western art, which he studied during his youth at Tama Art University and the Buddhist studies department at Taisho University. In addition to those technical training courses, there were perhaps indications of Buddhist sensitivity blurred without the awareness of an infant stage.

From these extraordinary conditions Hirabayashi's art was born. On such background, there linked the three image-symbol systems of contemporary pop icons, Tantratic Buddhist icons of long tradition, and western modern art, each with differing functions and aesthetics. And the link short circuits, and spins a unique image with subtle deviations from whichever image-symbol system's standards of value.

A clear, deep indigo universe spreads out inside the mysteriously shaped panels of his works. The faint, white things floating midair are the temple and the stupa; the sacred beasts, the Holy White Elephant and the Kylin (Mythical animal giraffe). In short, it is a view of the Pure Land. Also there is the strange shape of the panels, which in truth are shaped like the face of an elephant and a giraffe. The painted colors of the rainbow which encircle the panel and the indigo hue of space give depth, but they are also arranged by the symbolic colors from Buddhist thought. In other words, his works are also mandalas, Buddhist charts of the cosmos.

Mandalas are symbolic images which represent the comprehensive Buddhist view of the cosmic world. But the symbolic system for interpreting those images is constructed with complexity to weirdness. However Hirabayashi's style is more contemporary pop quite different than the tradition mandala. The shapes of the elephant and giraffe refer to a commercial characters while the Pure Land temples and the stupa look like fantasy game motifs. The complicated and mysterious Tantratic Buddhist iconography is filtered through popular forms and is entangled with the grammar of modern art. Could this be the post-modernism of the mandala?

Now there spreads post-modernism's common sense, which has been cynically woven up with citation from databases of popular characters, the rules of pop culture and the rules of modern art. But Hirabayashi’s art doesn’t fit with icons which satisfy such common sense. On the other hand, neither is it the fixed icons for the promised mystery and peace of mind, that the Western monotheistic gaze seeks in Eastern thought and sensitivity such as Buddhism and Tao etc.

Murmurs, he is spinning, are linking with all that tradition, modern high culture, and contemporary pop, however varied each of their laws. The private language or the quasi-mandala, which spins, shows without telling, the limitless cosmos that can not be represented in whichever languages, from various personal tricks and other languages. For the very reason that it fails to fit the law of art, the Image’s Real of the endless tiny universe is faintly beginning to blossom.

~ On the Celestial Equator of Spiritual/Pop ~

I am an artist and a priest of Shingon Buddhism.  I have been producing works with the concept of “Spiritual Pop” in mind.

In Buddhism is the word “Bonjofuri,” which means ordinary people and saints aren’t different.  I think that the world of ordinary people who are into the modern pop culture of chara and moé doesn’t conflict with the world of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas which is in the spiritual Pure Land.  Modern pop culture is given an accidental meeting with the unpopular spiritual cultures of Buddhist and eastern traditions, and they are presented as a contemporary art based on the equinoctial that is beyond their difference.

From this I would like to awaken the “Pure Land,” that is, “a pure and innocent heart” from the depth of people minds, which live between reality as Deathtopia, and virtual reality.