AUDREY REED
News Editor
It’s the drug trip without the hangover, memory loss or lasting addiction.
“Ecstasy: In and About Altered States” at the Geffen Contemporary at the Museum of Contemporary Art creates experiences that challenge the perception of a sober mind.
The exhibit features traditional paintings as well as sculpture, audio and video, and complete environmental rooms. The installations reflect either the artists’ experience on drugs or challenge the viewer to go into an altered state.
“Ecstasy” is a 60,000-square foot exhibit with never-before-seen works from 30 international artists, one-third of whom have never been shown in Los Angeles. Most of the works were created in the past 15 years.
The topic came from the renewed interest of human perception and drug use in the art community, said Gloria Sutton, curatorial project coordinator at MOCA.
“It’s a very open-ended theme,” she said.
Because of the openness, installations vary in tone from the amusing and whimsical to the puzzling and thoughtful.
“It captured the essence of being in that state,” said Michael Diaz of Los Angeles, who was at the exhibit Saturday. “Some things made me laugh. I thought they were right on.”
One popular installation room is Erwin Redl’s “Matrix II.” The entire room is filled with a grid of perfectly aligned green lights that visitors can walk between.
“When you are in the Matrix room, you are in a different realm,” said Jackie Tran of Orange County, who was viewing the exhibit on Saturday.
Some of the installations use drug substances in the artwork. Klaus Weber’s “Public Fountain LSD Hall,” located at the front of the museum, uses potentized LSD in place of water. Another artist, Fred Tomaselli, was inspired by ‘70s counterculture and crafts mosaics with embedded pharmaceutical drug capsules.
Other installations, such as Charles Ray’s self portrait, “Yes,” were created under the influence of drugs.
The last category is made of installations meant to bring the viewer into an altered state. “Your Strange Certainly Still Kept” by Olafur Eliasson uses strobe lights to illuminate a waterfall in a pitch-black room. The effect: the droplets seem to freeze mid-air.
“It was really different looking at this stuff sober,” Diaz said. “It made me question my reality.”
Franz Ackerman’s oversized-mural “Sky Shop” and Assume Vivid Astro Focus’s (AVAF) “Panorama Bar” were made specifically for this exhibit.
AVAF fitted a replication of an underground Berlin bar to the museum space. Containing mirrored floors, a huge topless dancer stretched in a backbend across the ceiling and spot lights, the bar within in a museum offers an altered state to viewers.
Viewers feel free to talk to each other as they experienced these altered states together, like Carsten Höller’s “Upside-Down Mushroom Room” that contains a larger-than-life fungi field spinning from the ceiling.
Because of the nature of the exhibits, Sutton said it is imperative for these artworks to be viewed in person.
“(It) demands a bodily experience,” Sutton said. “A lot of works, like paintings, can be reproduced in books, even though it’s not the same. For a lot of these experiential installations, you have to be there physically to see how the work affects you.”
10-27-2005
