A Room of Wisdom

Amanita is pleased to present A Room of Wisdom, Bill Jensen’s solo exhibition at 313 Bowery, New York.

Bill Jensen (b. 1945, Minneapolis, Minnesota) came into prominence in the late 1970s in New York City. Known for his abstract and expressive works, Jensen’s art often explores themes of spirituality and nature through gestural brushwork and rich textures. His work has been exhibited at the New Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, at the Whitney Museum of American Art including the 1981 Whitney Biennial, and the Museum of Modern Art. Recently, his work was shown at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in conjunction with its Albert Pinkham Ryder exhibition in 2021, and at MoMA PS1 in New York in 2016. Jensen earned his BFA and MFA from the University of Minnesota in 1968 and 1970 and relocated to New York City in 1971. He has lived and worked in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn since 1976.

Jensen’s work is in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Boston Museum of Fine Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., the Tate, London, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Artist Statement

1
I paint so the cosmos can see itself
I paint so that the cosmos can be with itself
I paint so that the cosmos can remember itself.
I paint so that I can make contact with the cosmos
I paint so that I can be with the cosmos
I paint so that others can remember the Cosmos.

– Bill Jensen

2
It is better to not know and do, than to think you know and not do. Innocence on fire is far better than intelligence on ice. – B.J.

3
We were all led astray by the seemingly pure cry of the loon. Though it is not any better outside with the songs of the cicadas, and with every new breeze the willow displays another configuration. – B.J.

4
Yet the hawk has a thousand valleys in its eye, but flies straight to its nest. And from deep within the earth, mountains rise straight to the sky and beyond. Each revealing an occurrence appearing of itself. – B.J.

5
WHEEL-RIM RIVER SEQUENCE
Dear Park

No one seen. In empty mountains,
hints of drifting voice, no more.

Entering these deep woods, late sun-
light ablaze on green moss, rising.

– Wang Wei (8th century C.E.)

6
ON RETURNING TO WHEEL-RIM RIVER

At the canyon’s mouth, a far-off bell stirs.
Woodcutters and fishermen scarcer still,

sunset distant in these distant mountains,
I verge on white clouds, returning alone.

Frail water-chestnut vines never settle,
and light cottonwood blossoms fly easily.

Spring grass coloring the east ridge, all ravaged promise,
I close my bramble gate.

– Wang Wei (8th century C.E.)

7
Everything in all beneath Heaven is born of Presence. And Absence is the source-root at the origin of Presence. Presence only comes to completion when it returns back to Absence.”

– Dark-Enigma Learning, Wang Pi, (3rd cent. C.E.)

8
Wu Wei: Not Acting in the sense Acting without metaphysics of the Self to move with the creative energy of cosmos itself. Absence-as-Action.

– The Way of Cha’an, David Hinton

9
LAMENT OF THE GORGES

Young clear-voiced dragons in these
gorges howl. Fresh scales born of rock,

they spew forth of fetid rain, breath
heaving, churning up black sinkholes.

Strange new lights glint, and hungry
swords await. This venerable old maw

still hasn’t eaten its fill. Ageless teeth
cry a fury of cliffs, cascades gnawing.

through these three gorges, gorges
full of jostling and snarling, snarling.

– Meng Chiao (9th century C.E.)

10
AUTUMN THOUGHTS

Bamboo ticking in wind speaks. In dark
isolate rooms, I listen. Demons and gods

fill my frail ears, so blurred and faint I
can’t tell them apart. Year-end leaves,

dry rain falling, scatter. Autumn clothes
thin cloud, my sick bones slice through

things clean. Though my bitter chant
still makes a poem, I’m withering autumn

ruin, strength following twilight away.
Trailed out, this fluttering thread of life:

no use saying it’s tethered to the very
source of earth’s life-bringing change.

– Meng Chiao (9th century C.E.)

11
Knowing not-knowing is lofty.
Not knowing not-knowing is affliction.

– Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching (5th century B.C.E.)

12
An Elegant dragon with its life breath gone,
better a rat with some scurry left in him.

– Yuan Mei (18th century C.E.)

All Chinese translations by David Hinton.