BILDHALLE AMSTERDAM

PAUL CUPIDO – MUKAYU

GALLERY OPENING DAYS: THU-SAT 1-3 OCTOBER 12H-19H, SUN 4 OCTOBER 12H-18H
HAZENSTRAAT 15, AMSTERDAM
THE ARTIST WILL BE PRESENT AND SIGN HIS BOOKS

For a smooth coordination of visitors during opening days, please email to info@bildalle.nl to reserve a time slot for your visit.

In his recent photographic works from Japan, Paul Cupido took the concept of mukayu as one of his spiritual guidelines. The concept crossed Cupido’s path at a small ryokan (a traditional Japanese inn), where the term was explained and the classical Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi cited to provide an apt example: “An empty room will be filled with light because of its emptiness”.

Mukayu refers to “non-existence”’, “not having a purpose”’, or “things as they are”’. As Japanese architects and gardeners know well, emptiness is never empty but full of promise and potential, and the same goes for Cupido’s poetic imagery. Mukayu, in turn, fits within the larger framework of Mu, which has inspired and guided Cupido since his first artist’s book Searching for Mu (2017). Mu relates to “not-having”, to “the letting go of ego”’, and the “embracing of the possible”. Cupido’s work embraces, among others, the transitory, metamorphosis, emptiness, potentialities.

Cupido’s photographs are a starting point rather than an end in themselves. They seem to require from the viewer an attitude of patience, curiosity and openness. Despite the implicit notions of the fleetingness of things, Cupido’s unique photographs are printed with craftsmanship and extreme care. Bringing back home his images from journeys like those to Japan, Cupido focuses on finding the right balance between image, paper, ink and printing process.

With his works (modestly sized but monumental in spirit) being printed on self-made papers or on Japanese washi papers – organic, artisanal, imperfect – he wishes to reach the heart more than the head. Cupido’s visual poems, presented in new constellations on each occasion, appeal to the ephemeral and uplifting world of music and dreaming. In the artist’s own words, “Making photographs is a natural process instead of depicting nature from the outside. The photograph is an echo of the feeling I felt that I wish to connect to the viewer’s own feeling and imagination”.

‍

“I aim to engage with the world with wide-open senses. My work is about the magic moments of life as well as its inconveniences. I want to take pictures, while forgetting about the process of photography, until I’m saturated with an existential sense of life. Every step I take begins with the notion of mono no aware: the transience of everything, the gentle melancholy of things, being sensitive to ephemera”.

- Paul Cupido

‍