Spirituality is a broad, etymologically ever-evolving concept. Humans turn to it for a multitude of reasons: to seek divinity, to reach transcendence from within, to foster kinship. The contemporary market also adapts the concept, cleverly rebranding it as as ‘mindfulness’. Opening on 23 September at Rossi & Rossi Wong Chuk Hang, Out of Sight outlines interpretations and expressions of the intangible and elusive matter of spirituality. Through paintings, drawings and sculptures by a diverse array of artists, including Billy Apple, Siah Armajani, Janine Antoni, Fereydoun Ave, Konstantin Bessmertny, Matthew Brandt, Szelit Cheung, Gade, Abbas Kiarostami, Amal Lin, Norste, Shubigi Rao, Nicole Wong and Tom Wudl, the exhibition delves into the universal subject of spirituality, which transcends times, cultures and individuals, and presents a minuscule fraction of what spirituality means.

Anthropomorphism has also been used over time to represent gods and deities, as the ancient Greeks originally proposed. Projecting humanlike features and flaws onto sacred beings constructed a worldview regarding the relationship between natural phenomena and human interactions. The collage Four Sacred Elements (2008) by Fereydoun Ave (b. 1945) juxtaposes an antique stone sculpture of a deity with a human footprint and a vibrant splash of red, offering an exploration of the fundamental forces that shape our world.

Other figurative forms of religious iconography have been written into human society over the millennia, perpetuating their influence over the individual psyche. In the mixed-media sculpture I unfold, I infold (2019), Janine Antoni (b. 1964) reinvents the gesture of the Virgin Mary, wherein one of the subject’s outstretched palms turns inwards. The other palm reaches out to identify divinity, and she thus returns the energy to her body whilst acknowledging her human self. 

In far-flung corners of the globe, belief is a continuation of local ancient legends, and it follows a distinct logic. To an outsider’s untrained eye, this manifested spirituality in its visual form is at once exotic and alien. However, it is inherently imbued into the rhythms of quotidian life and is ever evolving. Gade (b. 1971) borrows from the iconography of Tibetan Buddhism, which he frequently modifies in his practice. In Red Scripture (2006), the religious imagery is replaced with contemporary motifs from pop culture and political posters to provoke reflection on the status quo of beliefs in an ultra-consumerist society. Taking a similar approach to comment on contemporary issues via spiritual imagery, The Times of Great Ignorance in Yab Yum – Deity of Doubt (2022–23) by Konstantin Bessmertny (b. 1964) borrows yab yum, a common Tibetan Buddhist symbol for the union of wisdom and compassion. In it, a male deity and his female consort are physically entwined, surrounded by the chaos of secular existence. 

Inseparable from any school of philosophy on spirituality is the discussion of our own mortality, and artists have been examining the realm of the afterlife since time immemorial. In his titular 2016 work, Billy Apple (1935–2021) stated that ‘The Artist Will Live Forever’ – a message conveying his attitude towards the legacy of his artistic career. He immortalised his vision by turning his own name into a trademark under which he cultivated a breed of apples called Class 31. He cast and painted one of these apples in Billy Apple® Cultivar (Red) (2007). Working around the same time, Siah Armajani (1939–2020) studied various philosophers for whom he built fictitious tombs based on their ideas of life and death. Tomb for Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2016) is a drawing of this embodiment.

The essence of beliefs and the spirituality of people, objects, nature and matter are elusive, to say the least. Yet in a post-everything world, they can be distilled into courses, retreats and training sessions. Their efficacy can be qualified by their accorded price tags: the higher the price, the more elevated the promised marketed experience. In Regarde Narcisse (2013), Shubigi Rao (b. 1975) depicts a boy, alone, staring into an image through a phone, a contemporary rendition of Narcissus moulded into the challenge and obsession of today.

Those who probe into spirituality try to make sense of the world and define their own being either within or outside of it. For the vast meanings that spirituality prompts, the artists in Out of Sight set out with their own queries that ultimately produce intimate and idiosyncratic visual expressions.