Ecstasy: In and About Altered States [Hardcover]

Paul Schimmel (Editor), Lisa Gabrielle Mark (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 4, 2005

Ecstasy acts as an intersection in which structures of human consciousness meet a range of contemporary art practices. Each work in Ecstasy, which accompanies an exhibition at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, enacts its own particular intervention into human consciousness -- surprising us, questioning familiar realities, and suggesting alternative ways of ordering experience -- through installation, painting, sculpture, and new media.Ecstasy traces two lines of contemporary inquiry into surrealism's fixation with altered states of consciousness. One follows the tradition of artists attempting to capture metaphysical conditions in representational form -- as seen in the wall-scale, resin-suspended pill paintings of Fred Tomaselli; Charles Ray's photographic self portrait, Yes, which depicts the artist on LSD; and Franz Ackermann's recent Mental Maps, abstract paintings that represent cities using his own subjective form of GPS. The other trajectory explores the notion of phenomenological experience through works that play on disjunctions in scale, or disrupt our means for spatial orientation. In Carsten Holler's Upside Down Mushroom Room, for example, the ceiling and floor appear to change places, while in Jeppe Hein's Moving Walls, museum walls begin to close in on the viewer. The 2,200 hand-painted polymer psilocybin mushrooms of Roxy Paine's Psilocybe Cubensis Field, meanwhile, suggests other possibilities for altering our sense of reality.These and the other bold and imaginative works in Ecstasy challenge conventional notions of interactivity while creating a heightened sensory experience for the viewer. Six essays accompany the artworks, considering such topics as the relationship of altered states to art-making, both as the manifestation of the artist's state of mind and as an experiential effect created for the viewer; drugs and the process of self-observation in literary works; and the "dark side" of altered consciousness.Distributed for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"[A] nicely designed, illustrated, and presented catalog... recommended for art research libraries in academic and public domains to the extent that it documents and elucidates a past and continuing phenomenon in various media and art circles." Library Journal

Heartney writes that "the catalogue is well worth perusal.... [t]he seven essays present a set of intriguing and often conflicting definitions of the phenomenon under consideration." Eleanor Heartney Art in America

About the Author

Paul Schimmel is Chief Curator of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 248 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (November 4, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0914357913
• ISBN-13: 978-0914357919
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,202,186 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Discovering How Far Art Can Take Us, November 23, 2005

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ecstasy: In and About Altered States (Hardcover)

Walking into the cavernous spaces of the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA in Los Angeles where the current exhibition ECSTASY: IN AND ABOUT ALTERED STATES is a mind molding experience. This very fine catalogue compiled by Paul Schimmel, the Chief Curator, and Lisa Mark is exceedingly well done. Though the exhibition lends itself more to the experience of interacting with the art, this book/catalogue manages to take us there as successfully as any publication could.

The curatorial concept addresses the results of sensory interaction with both representational and experimental art forms. The effects of mind-altering drugs informs many of the installations, as does hypnosis of the artist prior to executing art, and the clever manipulation of visual perceptions. Reading this intelligent book is a bit of Alice in Wonderland, a bit of staring at those dot pictures whose incongruous doodlings become a startling picture while the eye stares at a point, and a bit of the 1960s psychedelic art at which we chuckle now. And ah, the walk under ceiling-suspended upside down mushrooms - one of the many fantasy excursions 'contained' at the Geffen.

In less practiced hands a topic of this sort that depends so heavily on sensory perception would not be translated into book form. But Schimmel and Mark make it work as well as any other part of the content! This is an important topic, an important exhibition, and an important document. Recommended. Grady Harp, November 05