AU opens 2012 season

The American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center will open its 2012 season on Saturday, January 28, with four new exhibitions, including Anil Revri: Faith and Liberation through Abstraction, an exhibition of introspective works by artist Anil Revri, a native of New Delhi, India.

Revri, an alumnus of Washington’s Corcoran College of Art and Design, constructs his paintings on a grid, and the repetition of finely detailed geometric elements offers viewers numerous optical rewards. But these are also contemporary spiritual paintings analogous in their functions to Tantric Art, and its distant relation the Byzantine icon.

Byzantine icons were thought to be windows into heaven. Through the icon, the viewer could know God and experience the miraculous. It was expected the Byzantine iconographer would lead a life of prayer, meditation, and fasting. For Revri, too, as a Tantric Artist, painting is a spiritual act, an act requiring discipline and devotion.

“They are beautiful, their craft is breathtaking, but their success depends on whether they further us, and the artist, along in the process of enlightenment,” said Jack Rasmussen, director and curator of the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center.

The exhibition is sponsored by the Indian Embassy.

In addition to Anil Revri: Faith and Liberation through Abstraction, three other exhibitions will open January 28 at the American University Museum — Gabarrón’s Roots, Raoul Middleman: City Limits, and Regaining our Faculties: Zoë Charlton, Tim Doud, Deborah Kahn, and Luis Manuel Cravo Silva.

Anil Revri: Faith and Liberation through Abstraction and Gabarrón’s Roots close Sunday, April 15.

Raoul Middleman: City Limits and Regaining our Faculties: Zoë Charlton, Tim Doud, Deborah Kahn, and Luis Manuel Cravo Silva close Sunday, March 18.