{psychedelia} – Page 77 – { feuilleton }

Forever Changes by Jim Lambie

Nothing to do with the late Arthur Lee, well…not directly anyway. I love the contrast between the dizzying floor design (created with vinyl tape) and the rather dour Corinthian columns in Jim Lambie’s installation. I believe the Flickr photo above shows the work being prepared.

Forever Changes, which also includes some of the artist’s playful sculptures, is at the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, as part of the Glasgow International arts festival until September 29, 2008. A review for The Scotsman describes some of its details. Lambie likes his floor coverings, having previously produced dazzlingly vibrant works such as ZOBOP which you can see being created in a little time-lapse movie here.

Yayoi Kusama

Infinity Mirrored Room—Love Forever (1994).

“It is not controversial to describe Yayoi Kusama as Japan’s greatest living artist,” says Hannah Duguid in The Independent. I made a post about Kusama’s artworks in 2006 and now her work is in exhibition at the Victoria Miro gallery, London.

For this exhibition, revered Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama has conceived a new installation Dots Obsession—Infinity Mirrored Room (2008) especially for the upper gallery and in the lower galleries will install 50 new silkscreen works that will be shown alongside two significant sculptural pieces from the early nineties. At Victoria Miro 14 the artist will present a series of new dot paintings and an environmental installation I’m Here, but Nothing (2000-2008). The exhibition will continue outside the gallery where Kusama will install one of her most infamous works, Narcissus Garden in Regents Canal—a work which has never before been exhibited in the UK.

More pictures here. The exhibition runs until 20 March, 2008

Narcissus Garden (1966—2008).

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Maximum Silence by Giancarlo Neri
• The art of Yayoi Kusama
• Atomix by Nike Savvas

Yoshitaka Amano in Berlin

Deva-loka (2007).

Big new paintings by one of my favourite Japanese artists at Galerie Michael Janssen, Berlin, until February 29, 2008. The wild details in Deva-loka are completely lost at this size but there’s a larger version on Amano’s site.

Creation (2007).

These works are being sold as fine art but Amano’s reputation rests upon his commercial art which embraces anime, manga and book cover illustration. As is often the case, the art world has a problem with this, regarding work for hire as lower than work for galleries, the latter being no less commercial in the sense that the works are sold to collectors who frequently demand more of the same; Andy Warhol’s studio was named The Factory with good reason. A comment at Creative Europe acknowledges the dilemma:

“There are two reasons why it is necessary to bring Yoshitaka Amano’s immensely successful professional biography into the equation here: on the one hand, the work he has done as a creator of mangas and animes (animations) provides an undisputed frame of reference for his pictures; on the other, it has become difficult where Amano’s oeuvre is concerned to uphold the differentiation popular in German speaking quarters between a more commercial applied visual art and the personally expressive variety.” (My italics.)

Amano’s non-commercial work at Galerie Michael Janssen is for sale, prices on request.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Takato Yamamoto

Happy birthday, Mr Hofmann

Albert Hofmann by Alex Grey.

Albert Hofmann, discoverer of LSD, 102 years old today. Last month Scientific American reported that hallucinogenic drugs are once again being considered as a way to treat psychiatric disorders.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of LSD
• The trip goes on
• Albert Hofmann
• Hep cats

The art of Sadao Hasegawa, 1945–1999

(No title) from Sadao Hasegawa 01 (1990).

It’s good to be able to finish the year with another artistic discovery. I’d not come across Sadao Hasegawa’s work before but this page has an extensive (complete?) selection of his paintings and drawings. This is gay erotica with a twist, being Japanese in origin yet incorporating figures and symbolism derived from Indian or Thai mythology, detailed psychotropic invention and the kind of angular motifs common in much illustration and design of the 1980s. A heady brew, in other words, and quite unique as a result, which makes it all the more tragic that he committed suicide in 1999. At least one of his books, Paradise Visions, is still available in Japan but a decent collection of his work for a western audience is obviously long overdue.

Paradise Visions (1996).

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