The Melt

Against a shimmering golden background, vibrant colors unfold from radiant formlessness into form. This form manifests a divine being from the world of Himalayan Buddhism, and although he is almost unrecognizable after undergoing a curious metamorphosis, if we look carefully we can recover his identity.

Begin by finding near the center a green serpent that is his belt, then a tiger skin covering his waist, and finally his kaleidoscopic necklace of severed heads. At the center of the painting, is a dark blue patch; in its depths, three eyes gaze out, as if he is amazed at the transformation he has undergone.

And he has good reason to be amazed, for he is the deity Mahakala, or “Great Time,” and thangka (painting) master Tsherin Sherpa has just morphed his standard form into something far beyond the ordinary. To create the image, Sherpa applied a series of mathematic algorithms to a traditional image.

Why has Great Time undergone this transformation? For Sherpa, the source of Mahakala’s metamorphosis lies in an intensive and sustained contemplation of the role of traditional imagery in our contemporary world.