Mindful living: on view in traveling retrospective organized by New York's Asia Society, the sculptures and installations of the late Thai artist Montien Boonma use Buddhist forms and medicinal herbs to create peaceful reflective environments

Art in America, Feb, 2004 by Janet Koplos

This piece was like a warm-up for a work of the same year with which Poshyananda closed the show. Alm (the label notes that the title plays on the similar sounds of alm and om) consists of 15 black pots with rounded bases, lined with varying amounts and configurations of gold leaf. Each has two, three or four grips around the rim; these are actually gobs of clay squeezed in a hand, in other words, solidifications of the void within a fist. The shape conveys a quality of tension and at the same time suggests the identifying mature of a palm print. The forms also vaguely recall skulls, (5) while the wide, open bowls, with their inner glow, convey an entirely different headlike volume.

The bowls are arranged in a triangle on a triangular wooden platform: at the end pointing toward the center of the room, one bowl has no grips and is fully lined with gold that wraps over the lip, as if it's full or as if it has reached nirvana. The darkness of the exteriors certainly seems grave, while the gold on the interior of a bowl meant to collect alms provokes questions of the nature of riches. Boonma presents the form itself as philosophical, in an exhibition that reaches across cultural boundaries to share meaning and to maintain hope.

"Montien Boonma: Temple of the Mind," organized by the Asia Society, New York, and curated by Apinan Poshyananda, debuted at the Asia Society [Feb. 4-May 11, 2003] and travels to the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco [Feb. 27-May 23, 2004], the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra [July 16-Sept. 5] and the National Gallery of Art, Bangkok [2004-2005]. It is accompanied by a 152-page catalogue.

(1.) "Buddhist teachings speak as reverently of nature as they do of the Buddha; in Buddhism, mindful living cultivates a fundamentally ecological awareness of the fragility and interdependence of human beings and nature," Apinan Poshyananda, "Montien Boonma: Paths of Suffering (dukkha)" in Montien Boonma: Temple of the Mind, New York, Asia Society, 2003, p. 15.

(2.) While symbolic fragrance is not frequently a part of contemporary art, other artists working with aroma include Cai Guo-Qiang, Chen Zhen, Wolfgang Laib and Ernesto Neto.

(3.) Poshyananda, p. 22.

(4.) Poshyananda, p. 20.

(5.) The exhibition included drawings depicting skeleton arms, hands or heads, while other works employed the pregnant symbolism of the question mark.