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“The flower and the jewel imagery are associated with wisdom, with liberating practices such as meditation and recitation of mantras. And I’m deliberately juxtaposing and merging the organic and the metric. The metric is also an attempt to make visible the invisible workings of nature.” — Tom Wudl

Artist Tom Wudl has exhibited at the legendary Venice, California gallery L.A. Louver for nearly 40 years. His most recent exhibition The Flowerbank World, however, has been closed prematurely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this exhibition trailer from L.A. Louver, we visit Wudl in his studio as he prepares works for the show, and we see shots of the installation.

From L.A. Louver:

Over the past two decades, Wudl has taken inspiration from the revered Buddhist text, the Avatamsaka Sutra (The Flower Ornament Scripture), to create an ongoing series of painstakingly detailed paintings, drawings and prints made in response to the text’s evocative and profound literary descriptions. Considered “the most colorful and dramatic rehearsals of Buddhist teachings,” the Avatamsaka Sutra is believed to be one of the earliest discourses by the Buddha. […]

Although inspired by Buddhist principles, the works themselves are not intended to be sacred icons. As a devotee of Buddhism, spirituality has remained at the core of his artistic output; and as a life-long student of Art and Art History, Wudl’s admiration for artists that have embraced the sacred in their work, has encouraged his own artistic pursuits. As a part of this exhibition, a selection of works by these formative “spiritually motivated” artists are presented in conversation with works by Wudl, from Wassily Kandinsky and Agnes Martin, to the Australian Aboriginal artist John Mawurndjul and a 19th century Tibetan Mandala painting. “It is my belief that art has a sacred function,” says Wudl. “The necessity for art is so elemental that it preceded the invention of writing. Art was invented to make the sacred visible by giving form to silent invisible processes that facilitate the unfolding of life.”