Within the context of the current climate emergency, war and energy crisis Hartmut Veit’s eco-art performance with coal is a re-enactment and homage to the Japanese artist Kazuo Shiraga, a Japanese abstract painter, zen monk and first-generation member of the postwar artists collective Gutai Art Association – one of the first Asian contemporary art movements founded in the aftermath of the nuclear bombing of Japan, in post war 1950s.
Inspired by, but also informing a creative and authentic approach to dharma practice this performative reflection uses paint, coal, meditation, ritual actions and the entire body as a paint brush to express the relationship between body, mind and matter.
Through the performative re-staging of Kazuo Shiraga ‘s oeuvre Hartmut Veit explores increasing collective anxieties about the current climate crisis and the looming potential of a new World War.
This performance was first staged at the opening of Stanley Ave Studio on 2 April 2022.