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MOVING IMAGE LONDON: SHEILA GALLAGHER
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| IMAGE: Moving Image 2013. Photo: Joe Clark |
 HI-RES |
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On View: October 17 — October 20, 2013 |
| For Moving Image London 2013, DODGEgallery presents, Rasa, Sheila Gallagher's video of a miniature three-dimensional model of an 18th century Kangra painting addresses the blending of human and divine love. Gallagher’s constructed set, including hand-painted walls and bonsai plants grown and pruned over several months, is slowly engulfed in flames accompanied by a soundtrack sampled from sound clips of love scenes from Western films. Rasa, a Sanskrit word that can be translated as "essence", "juice" or "spiritual rapture", also refers to an emotional response of a viewer evoked by a work of art, a kind of "aesthetic love of love." In Rasa, Gallagher re-imagines an amorous encounter between RadhaKrishna, the love union which exemplifies the highest form of the soul’s ascent in certain branches of Hinduism. Rasa both instantiates the scene and Gallagher's response to the painting, while nodding to the limits of her western subjectivity. |