Space-States and Other Realms
Space-States and Other Realms
Kate Abercrombie
Min Baek
Arden Bendler Browning
David Glowacki
Andrés Gómez Emilsson/QRI
Joy Feasley
Sarah Gamble
Rain Gideon
Raimonds Jermaks
Yae-rin Kweon
Kirk McCarthy
Hunter Stabler
Kate Stewart
Paul Swenbeck
Catching on Thieves
Jackie Tileston
Nathan Thomas Wilson
July 7th – 18th
Charles Addams Fine Arts Gallery University of Pennsylvania Cover Image Credit: Kate Stewart, Afternoon Apparition, 2015-17 Curated by Jackie Tileston and Rain GideonSPACE-STATES AND OTHER REALMS
For millennia, mys.cs, psychonauts, and ar.sts have a6empted to express their direct experiences with non-ordinary states or consciousness and other dimensions. The imaginal, entheogenic, and specula.ve interact and catalyze each other in so many dynamic and mesmerizing ways, and this group of ar.sts is ac.vely engaged in transla.ng these realms into form.
While the expected image bank for “psychedelic” art oDen registers as an illustra.on or postcard of the trip report, a sort of Fantas.c Realism, we are deliberately opening the vocabulary to offer work that expands our consciousness by using the aesthe.c experience to allow us access to these other realms and states of being. Conceptual and visual experiments generate new possibili.es for the viewer, and paradigms become deliciously slippery under our feet. Gnosis happens in all kinds of ways.
In 1956 the psychiatrist Humphry Osmond coined the term psychedelic, deriving it from the Greek psyche – soul, mind, and deloun – to manifest, to open. This could relate to all ar.s.c efforts to depict the inner world, not just those precipitated by inges.ng a mind-altering substance. At its best, art is a psychoac.ve phenomenon that inherently alters consciousness.
In his book Are you Experienced: How Psychedelic Consciousness Transformed Modern Art, cri.c Ken Johnson talks about “how consciousness abstracts and organizes sensory input.” According to his theory, psychedelics “ac.vate exactly the func.ons of consciousness that we rely on to produce art and to represent experience, memory, and fantasy in formally intelligible and illumina.ng ways.”
The ar.sts included in Space-States and Other Realms use architecture, abstrac.on, pa6erning , and symbols of mythical and theore.cal origins to construct images of subtle invisible phenomena, theore.cal shapes of the universe, mys.cal creatures, and microcosmic vibratory events. Humor, imagina.on, and specula.on pulsate beneath the works As immersion into non-ordinary experiences transform knowledge, we can ask how future genera.ons will embody their direct experiences of expanded reali.es.
-Jackie TilestonWith thanks to the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania for hosting this exhibition, and the Philadelic Conference and the Penn Psychedelic Collaborative for the inspiration!
Hunter Stabler
Orion Spin Resonance of Solomon’s Phylogenic Memory/Asklepios Galgalim, 2016
44 x 44 in. hand-cut pigment print mounted to clear acrylic sheet
Arden Bendler Browning
Virtual Machu Picchu collage 2, 2020
19 x 24 in, watercolor, acrylic ink, acrylic spray paint on yupo and paper collaged on board
Arden Bendler Browning Alternate Worlds, 2022 40 x 30 in, spray paint, acrylic, acrylic ink, acrylic gouache, flashe, and mural cloth on panel and aluminum panel
Sarah Gamble
The Fantastic, 2021
60 × 50 in, Oil and acrylic on canvas
Energetic Constellations, 2022
Video animation stills
Yae-rin Kweon
Jackie Tileston Electric Agent, 2023
24 x 30 in, oil, gouache, pen on linen
Jackie Tileston
Just This, 2023
30 x 24 in, oil, gouache, pen on linen
Jackie Tileston
Ontological Slide, 2023
30 x 24 in, oil, gouache, pen on linen
Paul Swenbeck Photovore VI, 2015
Glazed terra cotta, 16 × 10 × 10 in
Porifera III, 2015
Paul Swenbeck
Glazed earthenware paper clay, 201⁄2 × 101⁄4 × 101⁄4 in
Kate Abercrombie
Last Year’s Leaves are Smoke, 2020
20 × 16 in, gouache on paper board
Kate Abercrombie
Memory Conformity or Sisterhood, 2020
20 × 16 in, gouache on paper board
David Glowacki
Entropy (Gaussian Fields), 2023
Video stills
Min Baek
Zero View, 2023
27 x 30 in, vinyl, pigment, oil, glitter on canvas
Min Baek
Salmon, 2023
60 x 65 in., vinyl and oil on canvas
Min Baek
Moss Shake, 2023
28 x 43 in., oil and vinyl on canvas
Catching On Thieves
The Rainbow Passage, 2022
Readymade LED light, 197 in
Kirk McCarthy
Unbound Drawing #15, 2022
Pencil on paper, 5.5 x 8.5 in
Kirk McCarthy
Unbound Drawing #22, 2022
Pencil on paper, 5.5 x 8.5 in
Kirk McCarthy
Unbound Variation #2, 2023
Clay, powdered pigment, wood, wire, size variable
Night Hawk Migrating, 2020
Joy Feasley
15.5 × 20 in, flashe on panel
Joy Feasley
88, 2016
15 × 20 in, flashe on panel
Kate Stewart
Afternoon Apparition, 2015-17
24 x 18 in, mixed media on canvas
Kate Stewart
Clarifying AK, 2018-19
60x 48”, mixed media on canvas
Nathan Thomas Wilson and Dante Blackstone Performance Object Flask, 2014. Epoxy resin, pigment and performance objects, 8 x 3 x 3"
Nathan Thomas Wilson Automatic Man: The Land of Pleasant Living, 2007 Oil on oak panel 9 x 9"
Rain Gideon
NJ summer, 2011, 2017, 2019, 2020, 2023
16 x 20 in, digital collage of personal and found photographs, inkjet print
(next two pages)
Rain Gideon
New window, 2022, 2023
16 x 20 in, digital collage of personal photographs, inkjet print
Rain Gideon
Signal, 2018, 2020, 2023
16 x 20 in, digital collage of personal and found photographs, inkjet print
Score by Brendan Principato, 20:36
Raimonds Jermaks
stills from Psychedelic Replication Compilation and Planetarium
"Ultimately what we're touching is the invisible, all-pervasive Intelligence that surrounds us and penetrates us. It is grooming us to be able to tolerate its splendor”
—Terence McKenna