Reflections from Damaged Life.
An exhibition on psychedelia
26 September to 15 December 2013
To many artists in the sixties who referred to the counterculture, or who used hallucinogenic drugs as an artistic tool, the term ‘psychedelic’ was seen as compromised and the idea of a ‘psychedelic art’ resisted. It is for this reason that ‘psychedelic art’ cannot be easily categorised as a genre; neither can it be understood as an entirely overlooked art form.
This exhibition sets out to question what ‘psychedelic art’ might be, and reassess the artistic problems it poses. Rather than through the framework of counterculture and the hippie scene, it focuses on how specific artistic practices inflected the drug culture and its concepts of transformation and non-human perception. It seeks to redefine the psychedelic in terms of an art that deals with events and effects: events in social space as well as in the nervous system, and effects that spread as a kind of unconditional exchange between free subjects in a new sensorial community. The exhibition explores the experimental spirit, conceptual fluidity and formal obscenity of the psychedelic, and aims to expose the viewer to the experience of ‘otherness’ through artworks that deal with the non-sentimental sensitivity of the hallucinogenic drug experience.
Since the very idea of a ‘psychedelic art’ is tenuous, the exhibition does not propose a canonical presentation, but attempts to establish a series of artist experiments that relate to the many ‘plateaux’ of the psychedelic, and its multiple histories as they unfolded in particular cultural contexts in Europe, Scandinavia, Latin America and Japan. Although the focus will be upon historical projects from the sixties and seventies, the exhibition will include work from the fifties until the present day.
Artists in the exhibition: Jordan Belson, Jes Brinch, The Cockettes, Dexter Sinister, Öyvind Fahlström, Henriette Heise, Robert Horvitz, Pierre Huyghe, Sture Johannesson, Learning Site, Magma, David Medalla and The Exploding Galaxy, Marta Minujín, The Otolith Group, Pramod Pati, Sigmar Polke, Willoughby Sharp and Tadanori Yokoo.
The exhibition is curated by Lars Bang Larsen.
Selected texts
Events
Foreground:
Henriette Heise
Darkness Machine, 2010
Background:
The Cockettes
Tricia’s Wedding, 1971
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Detail:
Henriette Heise
Darkness Machine, 2010
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Öyvind Fahlström
The Little General (Pinball Machine), 1967–68
Collection Sharon Avery-Fahlström
On long-term loan to Museu d'Art Contemporani de
Barcelona (MACBA)
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Öyvind Fahlström
The Little General (Pinball Machine), 1967–68
Collection Sharon Avery-Fahlström
On long-term loan to Museu d'Art Contemporani de
Barcelona (MACBA)
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Öyvind Fahlström
The Little General (Pinball Machine), 1967–68
Collection Sharon Avery-Fahlström
On long-term loan to Museu d'Art Contemporani de
Barcelona (MACBA)
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Pierre Huyghe
L'Expédition Scintillante, Act 2 (light show), 2002
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León
(MUSAC)
Pierre Huyghe
L'Expédition Scintillante, Act 2 (light show), 2002
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León
(MUSAC)
Pierre Huyghe
L'Expédition Scintillante, Act 2 (light show), 2002
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León
(MUSAC)
On monitor:
Willoughby Sharp
COUGH UP!, 1975
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Alan Powell video archives
Learning Site (Rikke Luther with Jaime Stapleton)
House of Welfare, 2013
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Learning Site (Rikke Luther with Jaime Stapleton)
House of Welfare, 2013
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Marta Minujín
In vitrine:
Lo Inadvertido [The Inattentiveness], 1969
Background:
Archival documentation of Importación / Exportación
[Import/Export], 1968
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Collection of Mauro Herlitzka
Sigmar Polke
Mushrooms, ca. 1972
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Private collection
Right:
Sigmar Polke
Untitled (Head), 1966–68
Left:
David Medalla
The Raven mask for ‘The Bird Ballet’
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Private collection, London
David Medalla
The Raven mask for ‘The Bird Ballet’ performed at the
Roundhouse, Camden, October 1967 by The Exploding
Galaxy
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
In vitrine:
Archival material relating to ‘The Bird Ballet’ performed
at the Roundhouse, Camden, October 1967 by The
Exploding Galaxy
Left:
David Medalla
The Rainbow Bird mask for ‘The Bird Ballet’
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Sture Johannesson
Japanese Omnidelics, 1956–59
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Collection of Mathias Swinge
Jordan Belson
Still from World, 1970
Courtesy Center for Visual Music, Los Angeles
Foreground:
Magma, Curatorial intervention by Yann Blanc Chateigné
and Lars Bang Larsen
Background, left to right:
Jes Brinch,
Lava Lamp, 1997/2013
Dexter Sinister
Infinite Poster for a Solstice Party (Summer), 2013
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Dexter Sinister
Infinite Poster for a Solstice Party (Summer), 2013
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Foreground:
Magma, Curatorial intervention by Yann Blanc Chateigné
and Lars Bang Larsen
Background, left to right:
Tadanori Yokoo
Wonderland, 1973
Barakei: Ordeal by Roses (Mishima Yukio), 2007
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Private collection
Foreground:
Robert Horvitz
A Many Splendoured Thing, 2008
Background:
Robert Horvitz
Form is the Language of Time (for Keith Jarrett), 1970
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Robert Horvitz
Personal Domain of Freedom and Ecstasy 1, 1973
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Foreground:
Robert Horvitz
Personal Domain of Freedom and Ecstasy 1, 1973
Background, left to right:
Robert Horvitz
Page from my Diary: 22 September–4 October 1972, 1972
Page from my Diary: 9–14 September 1974, 1974
At First Sight, 2011
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
The Otolith Group
Anathema, 2011
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith