Emily Cheng's installation THE HISTORY OF REVERENCE addresses the lineage and iconography of world religions through seventeen large works of art.

Created in 2011 as "Charting Sacred Territories," this exhibition has been shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei, Taiwan; the Shenzhen Art Museum in Shenzhen China; and the Hanart TZ Gallery in Hong Kong.

THE HISTORY OF REVERENCE is comprised of the following works of art:

Houses of Worship is a series of six black and white scrims, six feet tall, showing floor plans of spiritual architecture for the six major religions of the world: Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Each painting has three hand-drawn floor plans superimposed, creating delicate veils of implicative shapes and directions.. There is a solemnity and appreciation for these great endeavors of humanity placed before us, these large, solid structures created especially for communing with higher beings. The Eastern religions - Hindu, Buddhist, Dao - create their temples with surrounding walls. They are environments for worshippers to meander through, communing with flowers and trees in a garden-like atmosphere. The first public area in a Buddhist temple always includes a huge incense burner and a linear series of small buildings that one can walk through with statues of Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, or guardians presented on a waist high altar. Western churches, synagogues, and mosques are often in urban areas, with discreet outbuildings of various functions.

Vessels/Arabesques is another series of black and white works, now depicting various vessels and patterns corresponding to the six religions. Western religions use their vessels for holding liquids - wine or water - as elixirs smoothing the journey to the spiritual. Eastern religions use their vessels to burn incense, as fire is the medium through which to send messages to higher powers. Cheng surrounds the Vessels with Arabesques found commonly on decorative items, as Torah covers or marriage contracts in Judaism, Arabic script, Christian clerical robes, Hindu hand ornaments, Zhou Dynasty cloud designs found on bronze vessels. Cheng's exquisite draftsmanship of diaphanous patterns entwined through the Vessels evokes the fragile and blessed breezes of higher ethers.

Branches of Belief - Eastern Traditions and Branches of Belief - Western Traditions are two colorful fourteen-foot paintings. They exude an indescribable contemporary attitude, perhaps somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Erratic shaped cushiony forms resembling respirating undersea growth, in big puffs of orange and yellow and lavender and green and blue, lounge about, comfortably resting against and accommodating each other. Closer, they are covered with roads, finer and thicker lines tracing movements of the six major religions, mapping their growth while innumerable sects split off. Differences in ritual or philosophical approaches are marked by Cheng's tiny printing or script. On the one hand, it is a happy dance of circles, light sprays, flowers, leaves, and creatures. On the other, it's a perplexing party mapping a fascinating meta-description of humanity's spiritual ways.

Formally opposite of the Branches of Belief are two eighteen-foot paintings, Symbols of Eastern Religions and Symbols of Western Religions. Each contain three large, clear mandala-related shapes in high color, with subtle details as rays, waves, moons, axes, begetting and blooming elements. These symbols, scaled to the human body, concern the viewer's relationship to Center. Huge concentric circles have their centers at the height of the viewer's heart and are meant to be bodily felt. The shapes are derived from calendars, temple domes, Buddha's aureoles, and various diagrams.

The final piece of THE HISTORY OF REVERENCE, which was the first piece of the series to be created, is a wall of thirty-six Meditation Paintings. Each religion is represented by six images, symbols similar to those of the eighteen-foot paintings: centralized, spinning, tunneled, radiating, reaching, in Cheng's high-luminous color. These small, intimate paintings glow with focus as they ascend the wall. We are led to make out peacefully what some of the familiar images are, where they might come from, and where they might lead us.

For more on Emily Cheng, see www.emilycheng.com