Spaced Out: Migration to the Interior
Red Bull Studios New York
October 10 - December 14, 2014
Spaced Out: Migration to the Interior is a collective and playful exploration of psychedelic consciousness in contemporary art that crosses the boundary between the dream-world and reality. This exhibition features artists, born between the 1920s and 1980s, who have common interests in psychedelic experience, disordered time perception, consensus trance induction, turn on tune in-drop out, temporal illusion, altered states of awareness, and novelty theory. Utilizing the psychedelic as a viable space of artistic creation—heightened uses of color, exuberant patterns, distorted forms, fantastical imagery in repetition or randomness, and a highly idiosyncratic visual language—the works seek to challenge our perception.
“When I was invited to curate a show at Red Bull Studios and saw the unconventional space with its curved walls, dark rooms, and bright, fluorescent colored bathrooms-which could have been a film set for Austin Powers - I knew immediately that it was the right environment to present the psychedelic work I’d been thinking about,” stated Phong Bui. The exhibition space is being transformed with color, texture, and light to open the mind to visual possibilities presented by the artworks. Jim Lambie’s vinyl tape installation, taking over the 3,000-square-foot first floor gallery space, evokes color and pattern into an optical illusion dreamscape, and is his first major public tape project in NY since MoMA in 2008; while in the downstairs gallery, a fluffy pink cotton candy colored carpet creates a floating effect along with peach painted walls reminiscent of cake icing.
A sample of the works on view include: a room-size site-specific work by Will Ryman, inducing a hallucinogenic effect through color and repetition, presented alongside Fred Tomaselli’s early desert-inspired piece, consisting of a mescaline cactus, grow lights, and good vibrations activated by the visitor—recreated for the first time since its sole 1986 presentation in L.A. Paintings in the exhibition by Peter Saul, Sylvie Fleury, Bruce Pearson, Deborah Kass, Keltie Ferris, Philip Taaffe, Alexander Ross, Lisa Yuskavage, John O’Connor, James Siena are in visual rapport with enigmatic and delphic sculptures by Ugo Rondinone and Rona Pondick. Ryan Trecartin’s and Takeshi Murata’s videos inundate with overly digitized, hallucinogenic flashes of sensory overload; Leo Villareal’s LED wall piece hypnotizes with transitioning sumptuous color; and Jon Kessler’s kinetic boy fills the air with churned out bubbles. Charles LeDray’s intricate miniature cricket cage made of human bone and Robert Gober’s wax candle with human hair offer altered presentations of “normal” through scale and psychologically charged images. As a whole, these artists directly or indirectly explore various means of the psychedelic as a point of departure to confound the senses, as well as shape alternative viewing experiences.
When asked about his inspiration for the show, Bui stated: “There’s a psychedelic renaissance we’ve been seeing since 2010, among alternative medical communities, particularly one led by MAPS (the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies), and formally explored in The New York Times art critic Ken Johnson’s monograph Are You Experienced? How Psychedelic Consciousness Transformed Modern Art (2011), and the perpetual subject of conversation with artist friends in the last two decades. As Charles Baudelaire said: ‘Art is long and Time is short,’ so I thought it was time to have some fun.”
Programs & Events: Poetry readings, performances, film screenings, and a panel discussion will be presented during the exhibition in keeping with the Brooklyn Rail’s and Red Bull Studios’ broader interest in bringing together a variety of disciplines in dialogue. Information will be posted on: redbullstudios.com/newyork
Curator: Phong Bui is an artist, writer, and independent curator. He is also the co-founder, editor-in-chief/publisher of the monthly journal the Brooklyn Rail and the publishing press Rail Editions. He is a board member of the Miami Rail, the Third Rail in the Twin Cities, the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, and the International Association of Art Critics United States (AICA-USA). Bui currently teaches at the School of Visual Art’s MFA Art Criticism and Writing, and MFA Photography, Video, and Related Media.
Red Bull Studios New York: Red Bull Studios New York is a multi-disciplinary project space, located in the heart of Chelsea, featuring an exhibition space, state of the art recording studio, radio booth, lecture hall and performance space. Recent projects include Living: An Exhibition by Peter Coffin and DISown: Not for Everyone by art collective DIS and curator Agatha Wara. redbullstudios.com/newyork
