Heart Sutra 1981

Curator: At first glance, Ay-O’s 1981 acrylic painting, "Heart Sutra," feels like joyful chaos. Editor: Yes, it is overwhelmingly joyful. The colors, the drips, the sheer energy… there's a sense of playful abandon, yet also a tight compositional structure—almost like controlled bursts of euphoria contained in the matrix-like form. Curator: "Heart Sutra" embodies visual poetry. The flowing acrylic lines in vibrant hues seem to represent the ancient Buddhist text's themes of emptiness, form, and interconnectedness. Editor: I can see that. The layers of color overlapping create a kind of depth and complexity that belies the initial impression of simple exuberance. It is far from uncontrolled, in spite of the dripping paints: the matrix remains orthogonal in an interesting way. Curator: Absolutely. Think of the historical context—Japanese postwar art scene and his participation in Fluxus. This abstract work could be seen as both an embracing of Western modernism, notably Abstract Expressionism, and a simultaneously deeply rooted commitment to spiritual tradition and Asian art history, especially in the East Asian reverence for calligraphy and the sutras themselves. Editor: The choice of line—almost as in drawing with thread or yarn in space—makes for a captivating paradox, between fragility and bold confidence, akin to what he later on created as "Rainbow art". Curator: Precisely. It’s a powerful meditation on perception and reality. The sutra speaks of transcending conventional ways of seeing. This work embodies that idea through color and form, creating a layered effect which defies definition, and invites you in. Editor: Looking again, what I first saw as chaos starts to look like a window: a new order born of color, which is maybe not so joyful after all, but is something to aspire to, still.