Yoga The Art of Transformation — DOP

Yoga
The Art of Transformation

May 22 2015

Yoga: The Art of Transformation was the first major exhibition that explores the visual history of yoga. Temple sculptures, devotional icons, vibrant manuscripts, and court paintings created in India over 2000 years, as well as early modern photographs, reveal yoga’s mysteries and illuminate its profound meanings.

I also want to mention two films that fit the topic perfectly. Have a look at this earlier post featuring a documentary about the history of modern yoga: Breath of the Gods. The video below tells the story of how the first yogis who used the entheogenic plant brew Soma to access states of ecstasy developed the postures, breathwork, mantra and meditation practices of hatha yoga to achieve the same results.

The Shamanic Roots of Yoga, Brian James (2018)

The images are scanned from the monumental catalogue.

John C. Lilly
Sensory Deprivation

Today I spent my first hour inside a floatation tank. If you never heard of it I recommend this article for a start: Sensory Deprivation Tanks. I just started to read a book by John C. Lilly the inventor of the tank. He also combined the lack of external stimuli with large doses of LSD.

Ben Tolman
Detailed views on inner landscapes

Ben Tolman’s ink drawings reflect the fact that there is a subtle world we only perceive in non-ordinary states of consciousness.

Claudia Andujar
The Yanomami Struggle

Andujar’s legacy is a shining example of art and activism coming together as one.

Noémie Goudal
Heterotopia

Goudal makes no attempt to hide any evidence of fabrication, drawing attention to the artificial, man-made aspect of photography

Arno Rafael Minkkinen
Body Land

For more than forty years, Arno Rafael Minkkinen has been photographing his body immersed in nature. What you see happening in the image happened in front of the lens.

Terence McKenna
An Ocean of Ideas

In this lecture Terence unfolds an ocean of ideas, a metaphor for the psychedelic dimension you are sailing out onto to cast the net of the human imagination to retrieve novel ideas out of the chaos.

Seeds
Time Capsules of Life

Seeds are the most complex organs produced by plants, capable of traveling space and time to ensure the biodiversity of our planet.

Painted Land
Australian Aboriginal Art

The art of the Australian Aborigines is one of the oldest artistic traditions alive. This selection shows paintings from the mid-fifties until now by artists from the Arnhem Land region in Northern Australia.

Jill Bolte Taylor
My Stroke of Insight

This account from lalaland is beautifully bridging the gap between science and spirituality to open up our perception of the world.

Chris Bryan
Mocean

Watching this video, I felt captured by a primal feeling of awe. One of these rare moments when we glimpse how inconceivably vast and powerful this reality is.

Sabin Bălaşa
Dreams of Eternal Blue

Bălaşa paints a unique universe, full of archetypal figures and metaphysical themes. He called it Cosmic Romanticism.

Tintin
Coming of Age

I grew up with Tintin and I just realized how formative Hergé’s ‘ligne claire’ was for me. His distinct visual…

Der Himmel über Berlin
Wings of Desire

If the human being is the only animal that knows it lives in time, the movie is about that knowledge, a modern fairy tale about the nature of being alive.

Stanley Keleman
Emotional Anatomy

This seminal book by Stanley Keleman explores the notion that physical human shape is interrelated with one’s emotional and psychological reality — mapping the geometry of somatic consciousness.

Kevin Lucbert
worlds in between blue lines

Kevin Lucbert draws doors into parallel universes. And he mostly uses the color blue, which obviously fits to DOP. It…

Eyvind Earle
Master of the trees

Eyvind Earle is a master of contemplative landscape paintings. To me these dream-like sceneries are highly hypnotising.

Franciszek Starowieyski
The Opulence of Demise

Franciszek Starowieyski liked to think of himself as a draftsman from the 17th century. The lushness of form and erotic exuberance is truly Baroque.

Pierre Verger
Black Gods in Exile

From detached gaze to initiatory knowledge: Verger is a true messenger between worlds.

Phillip Stearns
High Voltage Image Making

The series investigates the effects of high voltage and household cleaning products on instant pull apart color film.

Roger Dean
Floating Dreamlands

Roger Dean is best known for his work on posters and album covers for musicians, which he began painting in…