Provenance: Private Collection, Makati City

ABOUT THE WORK

Perhaps, no Filipino artist has evoked a Zen-like aesthetic in his body of work more memorably than Lao Lianben. Titled Buddhist Television, the work translates into Lao’s characteristic abstraction a mind in meditation—an oval suggestive of a head, the cosmos, or the metaphorical “Buddhist television” alluded to in the title. While much of the color within this shape is white and pure, a tight knot in the middle indicates residual impurities that still need to be cleansed. Beyond the outline of this shape is the cracked surface of the world that continues to assail a mind embedded in corporeal reality. But their relationship is pronounced, and in fact fundamentally opposed, as if to emphasize that a man’s ultimate goal is to possess clarity of thought. No doubt that this is one of Lao’s most evocative works.