Altered States

Everyone is searching for their true selves, their real selves. We are all trying to fulfill ourselves, be our true selves, face the reality of ourselves, go into ourselves. Ever since we dispensed of God we’ve got nothing but ourselves to explain this meaningless horror of life. I think that the true self, that first self, that original self is real and quantifiable, tangible and incarnate…

…I am convinced the mutation was triggered by an act of consciousness. I entered another consciousness; I became another more real self. There has been an externalization of my other more authentic self! I am asking you to accept one deviant concept; that our other states of consciousness are as real as our waking state! We are experiencing a whole new force in nature.

– Dr. Eddie Jessup, Altered States.
”Altered States” brings together six contemporary artists, whose work often assumes altered

and alternate realities in order to give tangible form to express otherwise less tangible ideas.

Until recently the Romantic tradition has had very little currency in contemporary art, today its stock has raised considerably. Artists are now employing some of the very same strategies Ruskin and Baudelaire promoted – humor, shock, contradiction, distortion, the Grotesque, with surprising relevance. It’s the prevalent resurgence of these strategies that motivated this show.

At the end of Ken Russell’s movie “Altered States” Dr. Eddie Jessup is struggling to regain his physicality. He is slamming from one molecular state to the next, on the brink of plasmatic implosion when he is told… ”Defy it Eddie! You make it real, you can make it unreal!” His physical manifestations were a state of mind…an Altered State.

For more information on “Altered States” or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Kai Heinze at the gallery. Summer gallery hours will remain the same as our regular hours, Tuesday through Saturday 10-6 pm.

Our thanks to the following galleries for their assistance in putting together this exhibition:

Gorney Bravin + Lee Metro Pictures
Nolan Eckman Gallery