Surface of mantra: new work by lesley raeside and frédéric dumoulin

Surface of Mantra opens on December 4th, 2024 at One Wall Gallery in Eugene, Oregon, with a reception on  Friday, December 6th from 5:30 - 7:30 pm. Please stop by if you in the area.

One Wall Gallery (upstairs at Epic Seconds)
30 East 11th Ave. Eugene, OR 97401
Regular store hours are:
Monday - Saturday 10am - 7pm
Sunday 12 - 6

Lesley Raeside

Frédéric Dumoulin

In meditation, mantra is any repetition used to go below the surface world, but mantra can also be imagined as an invocation one employs in order to awaken to see things as they are presently, beyond the dissolution of ego. Surface is easily understood as the outer or uppermost layers of an object but can also refer to the first stages of interaction or contemplation where mystery opens to understanding. Most work by Scottish painter Lesley Raeside contains a single shape centered in the foreground of an otherwise empty composition. Repeated in a body of work Raeside's slight variations of color, tone and temperature feel oceanic, endless but also like subtle origin stories for awareness itself. Belgian painter Frédéric Dumoulin often uses repeating pattern, delicate pottery like surface qualities and compositions reminiscent of vast landscapes to imply a timelessness that is universal, abundant and epic. Dumoulin has described his work as transcriptions of Greek myths, stories that in their infinite retelling become mantra like, becoming "the dream of the waking person." Swami Satchidananda wrote of when mantra becomes habit, it "...mean(s) you have locked one end of your chain to a holy place, while the rest of the chain remains still in the outside world." If holy in the work of Raeside and Dumoulin is the untainted, something absolute, then Surface of Mantra is a chain's first and last links to a place where knowledge is lost and found and lost again.

​-Benjamin Terrell

Lesley Raeside

Frédéric Dumoulin

Lesley Raeside
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Surface of Mantra will open through January 31st, 2025.