Gonkar Gyatso b. 1961

One of the most important contemporary artists from Tibet working today, Gonkar Gyatso is renowned for his lyrical and ironic pop montaging in sculpture, printmaking, collage and painting. Executed in 2013, Ambivalent Resolution is a superb example of Gyatso’s pioneering modernism, negotiating the juxtaposition of traditional Buddhist imagery and poignant symbols of pop culture.

Gonkar Gyatso has appropriated the iconic Buddha figure as the seminal image of his oeuvre. Ambivalent Resolution features a seated Buddha figure, whose elegant limbs follow traditional 14th century Buddhist iconometrical standards of proportion. The sculpture is digitally scanned, digitally manipulated and then turned into a mould from which the resin sculpture is cast. Rather than the familiar, erect posture of meditation associated with imagery of the Buddha, Gyatso’s figure sits slouched, headless. The surface of the sculpture is covered in the artist’s trademark stickers—a mixture of American, European, Tibetan and Chinese decals featuring images of religious leaders, newspaper headlines, manga characters and superheroes, corporate logos and excerpts from Tibetan texts, all engulfed in cartoon flames. Gyatso’s hybrid aesthetic reveals a unique and deeply personal cross-fertilization of references, technique and experience as he seeks to reinvent the stereotypes concerning the visual culture of Tibetan Buddhism.

Born in Lhasa in 1961, Gonkar trained in traditional brush painting at the Central University for Nationalities in Beijing from 1980 to 1984 as well as traditional Tibetan thangka painting in Dharamsala; he later received his MA in Postmodern Art at the Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. In 2003, the artist founded the Sweet Tea House in London, dedicated to promoting contemporary Tibetan art and bringing together artists from inside Tibet and from abroad.

The artist’s mixed media works have been exhibited worldwide, and were featured in the Arsenale at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009 and the 17th Biennale of Sydney in 2010. Gyatso’s work is held in the permanent collections of the Rubin Museum in New York; the Newark Museum in New Jersey; the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford; and the Devi Art Foundation in Gurgaon, India, among others, and has been represented in major museum exhibitions including the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art; the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; the Tel Aviv Museum of Art; the Institute of Modern Art in Australia; and the Chinese National Art Gallery in Beijing. Gyatso’s work will also be featured in an upcoming exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 2014.