East meets West in spirit

Partners explore the gaps between cultures, selves

WORCESTER - "Peace Between Human & God," an art installation at the College of the Holy Cross, may sound like a serene exhibition. Indeed, it looks something like a temple. But it was built on contradictions.

"This exhibition came together because of constant disagreement," says Taiwan-born installation artist Yin Peet, who created "Peace Between Human & God" with her partner in life and art, Hungarian sculptor Viktor Lois.

In the installation, two rows of Taoist deity sculptures, each backed by a corresponding print or painting, fill the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery. In the aisle between them sit large illuminated heads, each crowned with another deity. At the front, as if on altars, translucent heads on pedestals house yet more icons.

There's a feeling of worship, but there's also tension. Many of the wooden sculptures are faceless, unfinished. Others run with gutters, eaten away by ants. The lighted and translucent heads are identical likenesses of Lois, making a Western counterpoint to the Eastern religious icons.

The installation thrives on contradictions. So do the artists who made it. Indeed, tension bristles in the air as they talk about it.

"Their backgrounds are quite different," explains Roger Hankins, director of the Cantor Gallery. "Viktor's history as a sculptor has its roots in experimen-tation and a noncommercial approach to making art. With Yin, she's a master at Chinese ink painting and calligraphy, and she's a sculptor. . . . It's been an interesting process to bring their two histories together to do an installation."

"Peace Between Human & God" started under a bridge in Taiwan in 2005.

Peet and Lois were tooling around Peet's homeland with Peet's mother, on their way to see an 80-foot-tall Buddha, when Lois spotted something out of the corner of his eye.

There were dozens of wooden Taoist deities in the muddy space beneath a bridge that was under construction. The pair had seen similar ones, perfectly carved and painted, in a village in which the main industry was producing deity statues for sale. "Everything for sale, over-polished," scoffed Lois of the finished statues. "It is craftwork, not art."

The couple asked a construction worker about the figures.

"He told us nobody there would pick them up," Peet says. Taoists believe that spirits reside in the sculptures, and they didn't want to mess with the spirits. Peet, raised a Taoist, says she felt the same reservations.

"She didn't want to deal with them," Lois says. "I looked at them. They were fantastic, half-finished, every carving personal."

"I wanted to be careful," Peet says. "And then my 82-year-old mother said, 'You guys are sculptors.' "

"No," Lois says abruptly. The two interrupt and speak for each other frequently in the course of a conversation. "She said, 'Take them to the US and sell them.' "

He's tall and dark-haired, brusque, a brooding-artist type, while the bespectacled Peet, who teaches at Holy Cross, smooths the waters and explains things with the patience of an academ-ic.

"She said, 'These are sculptures, you can finish them up,' " Peet concludes.

The two artists gathered up the icons. Lois moved a piece of plywood and found even more, scuffed and muddy. They crammed their car with them - 153 sculptures, stamped out by machines and then partially hand-carved, probably with the intention to sell to tourists.

Peet speculates about why the icons were dumped.

"In Taiwan, labor is getting expensive. Many factories have moved labor to China," she says, surmising that a local factory may have shut down midway through a production cycle. "It would be bad luck to burn them, so they just dumped them."

If each piece were simply a block of wood, she'd view the figures differently, Peet explains: "They're carved enough with a deity that it touches my religious belief." But because the pieces are unfinished, Taoists believe unsettled spirits reside within them, and they wouldn't consider them suitable for a temple or home altar.

Storage facilities in Taiwan turned them down. Lois and Peet ended up stowing them in a woodshed, which was first hit by a typhoon and then by an infestation of ants, which ate away at many of the statues. Then there was the question of what to do with them.

"We thought we might restore them," Lois says, pointing to one deity's missing hand. "But people got angry at this kind of interpretation. We decided not to touch them."

Instead, the artists took photos of each statue and used them to create images on rice paper to mount behind each subject.

Peet found herself trying to be true to her upbringing.

"I know these deities emotionally. Each has its own personality, and when I paint I try to humor them by incorporating what I think they do as a deity," she says. She points to a sculpture of an earth god, whom she depicts on a swing. "They ought to have some fun."

In "Peace Between Human & God," the artists are striving to bridge distances: between religion and art, between East and West, and indeed between themselves. The installation at once honors the statues' unsettled energy and examines their power as both religious icons and commercial tourist trinkets.

Lois, suspicious of organized religion, sees art as his spiritual practice. And here Peet agrees: "Art is holy."

It's this shared belief - that art is a vehicle for the spirit - that prompted Peet's mother, too, to approve the couple taking the icons into their protection. It's as if artists have a special dispensation for dealing with spirits - even if that means dealing with typhoons, ant infestations, and contradictory ideas.

"The collision between East and West happens all the time," Peet says. "Peace comes first. There should be peace between the two of us."