The way you work, in doing Sādhanā, is that every act you perform becomes a method of taking you to this other state of consciousness. You are trying to change your perceptual vantage point, and everything you do has to be a device to take you to that place. From a Western point of view, you are doing a complete cognitive re-organization. You are changing your reference point, changing the core concept around which the whole constellation is built. - Ram Dass

In Zane Lewis' second solo exhibition PARADIGM at Gether Contemporary, we are drawn deeply into the human mind's multidimensional universe. Through Lewis' work with painting and sculpture, he opens up a gateway into our innermost consciousness where, as a viewer experiencing the works first-hand, one must let go of any immediate concrete reading and devote oneself to a bodily experience thereby entering into a spiritual sensory realm.

Lewis' tools are clear colors and shapes applied to the canvas, or reproduced in the form of objects, which appear solid and physical but simultaneously seem to float and vibrate into a harmonized still and kinetic totality. It is Lewis' incredible virtuosity in his application of the spray paint on the canvas that pulls one closer and deeper into his universe. Green, purple, blue and violet blend on the surface interlaced with reflective silver and gold to create an amazing depth in the work's various perspectives. This lucid physical multidimensionality of colors weaving in-and-out ultimately generate a sensory universe for the eyes, followed by a primal experience through which our perception and journey into the work then expands to forms of being in altered minds, times, and places.

Through sensory deprivation float tanks, sound-baths and meditation, Lewis has in recent years increasingly studied the human states of mind, spirituality, and psychedelic thought patterns and processes. What started as a movement in the hippie communities, especially on the West Coast USA, in the 1960s in an attempt to break from society's rigid norms and structures and in search of a deeper understanding of humanity and liberation from our physical constraints, have today evolved into a form of 'new spirituality' making an imprint in contemporary art and here definitively in Zane Lewis’ works and practice. It is a movement towards the body as a starting point for experiencing and perceiving the world, where human connection to a meta-physical life-spark and deeper interconnection with nature and the universe is put to the forefront.

The paradox of the great physicality of Lewis's works is that he never physically touches the painting in his process. Through his use of spray paint, he always maintains a certain distance from the work, whose surface is hit by the splotches of paint thats spit out of the nozzle of his spray cans. One could say that before the paint hits the surface, it is suspended for a brief moment, independently floating freely through time and space, as a multidimensional object in a fraction of a second before it hits the surface of the work and connects with the other materials, thus shifting into a combined whole, an existence, a perception, a work, and new paradigm.