Me, The Unrecognized Banner Artist (II)

The banners I selected for this second post have, with a few exceptions, been unpublished or rather uncirculated until now. Ever since I visited Sri Lanka first in 1983, I have been fascinated with Buddha statues. Their symmetrical and harmonic composition seems to draw my eyes and mesmerize me. During one of my research visits to the Ayurvedic Hospital outside Colombo, I saw a small damaged, cheap statue on top of a cupboard, and I took a snap with my then old analog Nikon - a picture that has survived and is now with a friend somewhere in Indonesia... I'm not a Buddhist, although I studied Buddhism - and in fact the Sri Lankan version of it, Theravada - during my University years in Zurich.

My new camera and this fascination resulted in a random number of photographs taken of Buddha statues during 2005 and 2006, usually small ones, and usually not in Sri Lanka, where they are plenty. Out of these, I developed some banners, mainly working with inverting images and adding them together, to enhance the effect of symmetry.


This was my first Buddha banner, based on o photograph by the German photographer Jean-Noël Schramm, who went in search of "surviving" Buddha statues after the Tsunami. During his exhibition at the Goethe Institute in Colombo, I took a picture of this one and manipulated it. The only such banner with a Sri Lankan Buddha, who miraculously remained unharmed in the tidal mayhem.


This ebony Buddha is Sri Lankan, but sits in a house in Switzerland, with a family who has spent many years in Sri Lanka. I was invited to a meeting of ex-SL residents in Switzerland, pretty close to a village I once lived in, and found this statue. As the meeting went on, I could not resist its attraction and took many pictures, then manipulated them.


This is my favorite Buddha banner. I discovered the tiny golden Thai style (hence also Theravada) Buddha in a shop window in Zurich, on my way from a friend to the railway station. All I remember is: it was a very quiet Sunday morning, the roads were deserted, and I was walking fast, until the view struck me. Out of another version of the golden Buddha, I designed a birthday present for Cora de Lang, an Argentinean artist friend living in Colombo.


This is most likely a Thai Buddha as well, discovered in a Thai restaurant in Zurich. I was invited for dinner by Thomas Hardegger, a college friend of mine, and his wife, during one of my visits to Switzerland. And there, behind my back, was the stone carved statue. In a way I was irritated to find a Buddha in a restaurant (what about the Buddha Bar?), but it seems it's the fashion now.


This Buddha was amazing, and for some unknown reason brought back memories of my psychedelic past (another blog post?), and of my past in general. It is taken in a restaurant as well, in Lucerne, Switzerland. I had intended to meet Lia, my once girl friend from college days in Sarnen, and to my surprise, she had also invited Marcel, my friend, and her former husband. In fact it had been him who had introduced me to Buddhism in 1974 or 75, when I was ready to jump from LSD to meditation, shortly before I discovered TM. He was a psychologist at that time, a Zen practitioner and teacher. A great revival meeting under the Buddha's watchful eyes!


This is the Buddha of Shaxi, in China. Amazing, how he reminds me of a Christian God statue of the Middle Ages. And a reminder that most of China was once Buddha-Land. The restoration of this particular one was done with the support of archaeologists from the Technical University of Zurich. I visited the exhibition documenting the excavation and preservation of the Shaxi site in Zurich, together with my son Andreas, himself a great photo manipulator (see the link to his Deviantart site).