TRANS-META-PARA-UBER-HYPER-HYPNOPOMPIC: Uncanny Iconoclasm and The Mushroom of Liberty

By Rem Denizen

When consciousness lingers between sleep and wakefulness, it is the most precious time. Every day I love it and every day I forget it. If ever art evokes a modicum of this mindset, it is good. This is rare. This is the aspiration of these images, these objects.

The exhibition has three parts:
Inkblots with Nature and the New/Old Masters
30-60-90 Uncanny Geometry
(Statues)...of Liberty

Inkblots with Nature and the New/Old Masters is a series of images designed for a psychotherapist’s office. They are visual aids for integrating seemingly irreconcilable paradoxes. Images borrowed directly from nature and culture are re-conjured into bilaterally symmetrical inkblots. By innocently eliciting associations from the viewer they bypass the rational brain and inspire active imagination.

The series 30-60-90 Uncanny Geometry is an elaborate confession for having committed a slough of art sins. Appropriated images are slathered with ink and printed with literal spiderwebs and leaf skeletons. These dreamy conflations are then incised, analyzed and synthesized into groups of 30-60-90 degree triangles. Content is covered, recovered, unfolded and reformed. If Mike Kelley was as into Jung as he was Freud and decided to objectify dream interpretations then these would have been made in the 90’s.

(Statues)... Of Liberty is a group of objects that caricatures the erosion of civil liberties and the idea of liberation. It’s all very disturbing the way terrorism is disturbing but also beautiful the way mushrooms are beautiful.