News

Art Imaginär curator, Otfried Culmann, just sent a link to a slideshow video that he put together using photos that he and I took at the exhibition in Mußbach back in October.

I’ve been recently exchanging information with Satoshi Sakamoto for our individual project research on Fantastic and Visionary Art.

Following is a video interview with American Artist, Chet Zar whom I met in London last year at his Strychnin Gallery exhibition. Chet talks about how he moved from sculpting for Hollywood films to painting.

The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (CoSM) in New York will close at the end of this month. While the chapel will close with a New Year’s Eve party, the project will not come to an end.

Through the chapel’s corporation and with help from donors, they have bought a 40-acre plot of land in the town of Wappinger, 65 miles north of New York City and just a 20 minute walk from the MetroNorth train stop at New Hamburg. Here they plan to rebuild the chapel and develop an interfaith retreat center. There, eventually, they intend to construct a four story, domed temple to house the Sacred Mirror paintings and provide a place for rites of cosmic consciousness. There will also be studios, workshops, conferences, retreats, offices, visionary art exhibitions and an installation of the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors permanent art collection which has become a context for a growing community.

One of the criteria for the Greys for CoSM’s site selection, was that the land required rehabilitation. On the plot they selected were a number of old oil tanks. This required that the contaminated soil be removed and the surrounding treated.

Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (CoSM map – click to view)

Founded by the Alex Grey, and his wife, Allyson Grey, the chapel is a curious, combination of art gallery and New Age temple. The main attraction is an installation of allegorical paintings by Alex Grey that, in the context of a carefully orchestrated theatrical environment, is designed to transport paying visitors into states of ecstatic reverence for life, love and universal interconnectedness.

The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors proper is currently a long hall with red walls hung with a series of 20 life size paintings of standing human figures that Alex made in the early ’80s. They include pictures of naked racial types; images of people with skin peeled off to reveal underlying anatomical structures; and figures that have almost completely dissolved into patterns of circulating light. At one end of the hall, a radiant Jesus hangs next to a glowing Sophia. Grey’s 2006 portrait of the discoverer of LSD, Albert Hofmann, is displayed on an easel in the middle of one of the chapel’s other rooms. It’s called “St. Albert and the LSD Revelation Revolution.”

Hundreds have attended the Grey’s regularly sponsored Entheocentric Salon, an all-night party involving, according to the Chapel’s guidebook, “live painting, video projections, local and international DJs and musicians, live performances, lectures and visionary conversations.”

After spending time in the Liminal Village at the Boom Festival where he was exhibiting, Robert Venosa made his way over to Vienna. Here he paid a visit to my friend Peter Gric, who he sat down with and discussed his artwork and a little about Fantastic and Visionary art movement.

The video of that meeting of two great artists was only recently made available on the internet.

The Boom Festival had already been in progress for three days when I finally arrived. I had planned to arrive a day earlier, but I had not reckoned with the lack of syncronization of various modes of transport. On this particular Thursday evening I was due to participate in the Visionary Art Culture Creators Panel at the Liminal Village. It was not possible to communicate with Delvin who was presenting the panel while I was in transit. So I rightly guessed that he was beginning to wonder if I would make an appearance. Thankfully, I was not to disappoint him.

I found Delvin hard at work in the Liminal Village MCing various presentations. It was a rather welcome rest for me to put my bags down while he tended to his tasks. It was then that various other faces started to make an appearance. Faces I had until then only know on the internet. First was Laurence Caruana, just fresh from his painting course in Northern Italy, where my friend Micha Krebs (colory.de) attended as a student. Laurence then introduced me to Robert Venosa and Martina Hoffmann. The unmistakable Luke Brown then suantered in and joined the throng. I later came to meet the rest of the panel, Carey Thompson, Andrew Jones and Zariat.

Again Delvin took on the roll of MC for our discussion panel. He started off by introducing us all and noting our rolls in creating visionary culture in the community. He gave us the starting points or questions from which one of us would start and in turn inspiring another to expand on the topic further. It was very insightful to hear our ideas developed between each other. One of us would answer and then the others would follow expanding upon the last speaker or furthering the line of discussion in another direction.

Accompanying this post is the video from our discussion panel.

After us then came Erick Davis (techgnosis.com) who unfortunately I missed. I was not aquaited with his work until I came across is Boom Festival blog post. Through visiting his site, I came to order his book “Techgnosis” which is proving to be an interesting read. I’ve also since learned that he was involved in the book “True Visions“, which is next on my reading list.

Most galleries open late in the day and close early, but the Liminal Village Visions Gallery does things differently and was open the whole night. Now strange you might think seeing the gallery was situated in a large festival where people are usually doing their stomp through out the whole night until the break of dawn. When I was first told of the gallery hours I had my doubts and thought it was going to be a non event. How wrong could I have been?

It was a resounding success from opening until closing, with us usually having to herd people out before we could have our well earned slumber. The gallery was a psychedelic illumination in the night, attracting the psychenaught moths to it’s light.

While these nocturnal visitors were supping on our creative nectars, I had the opportunity to get know the other artists. There were also a number of other people who were working on site or friends of the artists that added to the congenial mix.

Being free from the gallery in the daytime I roamed over the huge site that was Boom. I have been wistful for a real Summer, by Australian standards, since my first in Europe in 2003 which had been an exception. I duely had my dose of Portugese sun which was merciless and sought the comfort of the lake on a number of occassions.

Little oasis of green permaculture were dotted over the site, and one of those was just on the doorstep of the Liminal Village and constructed by Delvin’s craft. Anja (anja-brinkmann.net) had assisted some weeks before with the German translations for the accompanying info booklet.

Robert and Martina gave their workshop, “Sketching the Fantastic“, and were rather surprised by the number of people that came to participate. Word had obviously spread. Undeterred, they proceeded as best they could with the limited materials and their limited persons, that being only two for an estimated 100+ people. As they commented they usually take a personal hands on approach to running their courses, and so with so many people this was rather hard to actualize. Even so they both managed to pull off a successful workshop.

Over the course of a week the Liminal Village conference and gallery was visited by many of the 25,000 festival goers from 80 countries. The Liminal Village was also diverse, presenting 30 speakers and artists from 23 countries. The intention of this gathering was to create a mosaic message which can open up dialogues on many levels to help give momentum and generate inspiration for visionary art and culture.

I was certainly inspired spending time with great artists. It was a wonderful meeting of minds and just simply a great social time.