Spaced Out: Migration to the Interior

Gregory Crewdson, Keltie Ferris, Sylvie Fleury, Robert Gober, Tamara Gonzales, Jim Lambie, Charles LeDray, Deborah Kass, Jon Kessler, Chris Martin, Takeshi Murata, John O’Connor, Roxy Paine, Bruce Pearson, Rona Pondick, Alexander Ross, Mika Rottenberg, Will Ryman, Peter Saul, James Siena, Philip Taaffe, Fred Tomaselli, Richard Tuttle, Lisa Yuskavage, Leo Villareal, and more.

Curated by Phong Bui and the Rail Curatorial Projects, Spaced Out: Migration to the Interior features a selection of 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 state 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 chaos, and a highly idiosyncratic visual language—the works seek to challenge our perception.

Paintings in the exhibition by Peter Saul, Fred Tomaselli, Chris Martin, Bruce Pearson, Deborah Kass, Keltie Ferris, Philip Taaffe, Tamara Gonzales, Alexander Ross, Lisa Yuskavage, John O’Connor, and James Siena are in visual rapport with sculptures by Rona Pondick, Robert Gober, and Sylvie Fleury. Takeshi Murata’s video inundates the viewer with overly digitized, hallucinogenic flashes of sensory overload; while Leo Villareal’s LED sculptures dispense and hypnotize; and Jon Kessler retards the sensory experience with bizarre energy underload. Charles LeDray’s intricate installation of miniature clothes and Robert Gober’s wax candle with human hair offer altered presentations of “normal” through scale and psychologically charged images. Jim Lambie’s floor installation evokes color and pattern to transform the room into an optical illusion dreamscape—one of three site-specific projects along with works by Will Ryman and Richard Tuttle. As a whole, these artists use the psychedelic as a point of departure to confound the senses and open the mind to visual possibilities.

EVENTS

In keeping with the Brooklyn Rail’s and Red Bull Studio’s broader interest in bringing together a variety of disciplines in dialogue, there will be numerous events during the course of the exhibition, including poetry readings, musical and dance performances, film screenings, and panel discussions. A sample of participants are listed below, and updated information will be posted soon.

Poetry: Anne Waldman, Robert Kelly, Charles Bernstein, Bob Holman, Anselm Berrigan, Vincent Katz, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Tonya Foster, Nada Gordon, Erica Hunt, Paolo Javier, Tracie D. Morris, Anna Moschovakis, Elizabeth Willis, Matvei Yankelevich, Pierre Joris, Bob Perelman, Erica Kaufman, Tan Lin, and Rachel Levitsky.

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