Zenga: Multidimensional Experience in Prague

Japanese Zen Paintings from the Kaeru-An Collection are brought to the National Gallery Prague by curators Markéta Hánová and Jana Ryndová.

Zenga is a thoroughly organized space where you can feel yourself a part of the artistic universe and customize your experience of Zen. The exhibition is organized into five realms, each presents one of the main principles of the ancient teaching, giving you an opportunity to become a disciple yourself.

The multidimensional space-shaping approach is adjusted in order to bring to movement all the senses you may use to perceive reality and its new experiences.

You are invited to observe the painting while sitting in a special area in front of it, while your hearing is busy with thoroughly chosen musical accompaniment. This way you may actually feel the artwork and interpret it in accordance with the teaching, making it your very own experience, allowing it to change you and therefore complete its mission.

The exhibition will run until October 2, 2022.

“Nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess”

Be sure to trust the art space that awakens silence in your own mind where an ability to listen to the world and interpret its messages can be discovered. That sacred faculty is safe and celebrated here. Each Zen dimension gives you a hand of help so you may discover Zen Circle in full and interpret “nothing is extra and nothing is absent” by yourself.

You may sometimes feel like someone got their eyes on you while having no exact shape and no exact representation but its presence is everywhere. Certain correlations with nature aspect can be already revealed at this step and extended at the third one where you will join the observation of nature practiced by Zen monks and the changes this observation provokes are expressed in the artworks.

“The mind moves according to the circumstances; yet the movement itself is the subtle truth of existence”

Trust the art space to teach you and you’ll get the feeling of dynamics and presence, use this chance to let yourself go with observation in these carefully created surroundings. The meaning of the observation and importance of the surroundings that form our personality and often shape our thinking are emphasized here.

Zen principles in all their variety will help you to understand that the painting is valid not according to the amount of inks spent on it but to the ability of the artist to link the spirit of the spectator and the source that has inspired the painting. Those who are lucky enough will be able to catch that slightest movement between the painting and the observer.

“Broad emptiness, nothing holy”

The teaching of Zen cannot be depicted but only experienced or lived out. It can’t be observed but the direction to it can be shown. Zegna space you are provided with everything you may need to discover the world in between the observation and actual experience. Each step gives you hints on how to feel what you usually see with your eyes and how to discern what you cannot see in from of your eyes.

The final surprise awaits you at the very end and of Zen circle of your own, crafted by your experience of co-creating the space where Zen monks will be your guides and experience providers. Absence of merchandise correlates perfectly with Zen spirit. Instead of it, a very special creative and meditation studio to process your adventure is waiting for you.

Therefore, Zenga art space possesses all the benefits of the unique deliberating journey of the temporary exhibition to build (the journey for) around the beholder while the vast majority of permanent ones are exposition centered and hardly care for visitors’ needs and the transformative role of art. The exhibition can truly make an input into beholder’s life, not only into museum storage.