Jampa Dorje

AN ART HISTORIAN’S PERSPECTIVE Jampa Dorje, aka Richard Denner, works with a variety of diverse media, yet traced throughout his oeuvre is the desire to identify a transcendent, harmonious experience underlying a fragmented, often brutal reality. Perhaps this is most present in his mixed media artworks that use appropriated materials taken from everyday surroundings. Beneath the literal associations of these found objects are subtle references to literary sources, art history, philosophical queries, and Buddhist teachings. These works contain unintentional and surprising connections that arise and are given form as the artist layers, alters, and manipulates the dense assemblages. Mixing disparate objects produces remarkable analogies. These materials, detached from their common purpose, are now free to signify on multiple levels. By employing a poetic language, Denner/Dorje creates compositions that establish a space in which one can be attuned to the present moment and the fluctuations of time and meaning. A spiritual world meets a stark reality in these works as past and present coalesce. —Lu Auz, Memphis College of Art