Space-States and Other Realms
Curated by Rain Jacobson and Jackie Tileston
University of Pennsylvania
July 7th through 18th, 2023
Kate Stewart, Clarifying A.K., 2018-2019
60 x 48 in, mixed media on canvas
Paul Swenbeck, Porifera III, 2015
20½ × 10¼ × 10¼ in, Glazed earthenware paper clay
20½ × 10¼ × 10¼ in, Glazed earthenware paper clay
Participating Artists:
Kate Abercrombie Min Baek
Arden Bendler Browning
Joy Feasley
Sarah Gamble
Rain Jacobson
Raimonds Jermaks
Yae-rin Kweon
Kirk McCarthy
Hunter Stabler
Kate Stewart
Paul Swenbeck
Catching on Thieves
Jackie Tileston
Nathan Thomas Wilson
Kate Abercrombie, Last Year’s Leaves are Smoke, 2020
20 × 16 in, gouache on paper board
Statement:
For millennia, mystics, psychonauts, and artists have attempted to express their direct experiences with non-ordinary states of consciousness and other dimensions. The imaginal, entheogenic, and speculative interact and catalyze each other in so many dynamic and mesmerizing ways, and this group of artists is actively engaged in translating these realms into form. While the expected image bank for “psychedelic” art often registers as an illustration or postcard of the trip report, a sort of Fantastic Realism, we are deliberately opening the vocabulary to offer work that expands our consciousness by using the aesthetic experience to allow us access to these other realms and states of being. Conceptual and visual experiments generate new possibilities 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 artistic efforts to depict the inner world, not just those precipitated by ingesting a mind-altering substance. At its best, art is a psychoactive phenomenon that inherently alters consciousness.
In his book, Are you Experienced: How Psychedelic Consciousness Transformed Modern Art, critic Ken Johnson talks about “how consciousness abstracts and organizes sensory input.” According to his theory, psychedelics “activate exactly the functions of consciousness that we rely on to produce art and to represent experience, memory, and fantasy in formally intelligible and illuminating ways.”
The artists included in Space-States and Other Realms use architecture, abstraction, patterning, and symbols of mythical and theoretical origins to construct images of subtle invisible phenomena, theoretical shapes of the universe, mystical creatures, and microcosmic vibratory events. Humor, imagination, and speculation pulsate beneath the works. As immersion into non-ordinary experiences transform knowledge, we can ask how future generations will embody their direct experiences of expanded realities.
-Jackie Tileston
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ESPERANZA project space ︎
ESPERANZA project space celebrates visual artists who make work about memory, place, personal identity, and family history.
This project is dedicated to my great-grandmother, Esperanza Balmaceda de Josefé, the Mexican communist feminist and social worker who fought for women’s rights, Pan-American feminism, and equality for indigenous women.
EPS was founded in September 2020 by Rain Jacobson.
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cit.i.zen.ship: reflections on rights
Deborah Willis PhD, Lorie Novak, and Rain Jacobson
New York University and Photoville NYC
In collaboration with For Freedoms
October 4th, 2018 through January 10th, 2019
Chester Higgins, State of Affairs, 2018Participating Artists:
Jack Adam • Aaron Adams • Gregory Michael Alders • Bridgette Auger/Itab Azzam • Perry Bard/Richard Sullivan • Laylah Amatullah Barrayn • Alexandra Bell • Cydney Blitzer • Terry E. Boddie • Masha Bordovskikh • Sheila Pree Bright • Zoe Buckman • Katherine Spencer Carey • Community Heroes, NYC: (Jasmin Chang, Zac Martin, and Ivan Valladares) • Emily Contreras • Jennifer Ling Datchuk • Damien Davis • Rose DeSiano • Claire Dorfman • Adama Delphine Fawundu • Lola Flash • Marcela A. Fuentes/Flavia Sparacino • Bill Gaskins • Michael George • Eric Gottesman • Mohammed Amir Hamza • Eric Hart Jr. • Chester Higgins • Grace Hinchen • Stephen Hunt • Jessica Ingram • Tailyr Irvine • Deborah Jack • Veronica Jackson • Monique Jaques • Mark Jenkinson • Philomene Joseph • Ed Kashi • Nick Kline • Lili Kobielski • Ligorano Reese • William Martin III • Tess Mayer • Isa Mejía • Editha Mesina • Diane Meyer • Marilyn Montufar • Nancy Newberry • Mary Notari • Ademola Olugebefola • Jayson Overby • Gordon Parks • Shina Peng • Stephen Perloff • Alice Proujansky • Zayira Ray • Jamie Schofield Riva • Joseph Rodriguez • Maria-Juliana Rojas • Bayeté Ross Smith • Griselda San Martin • Vicky Sanchez • Dakota Santiago • Ken Schles • Joey Solomon • David J. Spear • Grace Swierenga • Momo Takahashi • Diana Taylor • Hank Willis Thomas • Olga Ush • Katerina Voegtle • Julia Wang • Adrian White • Wendel White • Daniella ZalcmanHigh School Students from NYU Tisch Future Imagemakers; Bronx Documentary Center Junior Photo League; Benito Juarez Academy High School, Chicago; ICP Teen Academy; Lower East Side Girls Club; Our Community Record, Two Eagle River School, Flathead Nation, Montana; Red Hook Reporters, Brooklyn; Reel Works and others from across the United States.