exhibitions - acid trip
ACID TRIP: J. W. Mahoney
May 4, 2010
One Night Only, 6-8 pm
At the Artist's Request
(because the astrology is perfect)
Curator's Office is pleased to present the second solo exhibition of J. W. Mahoney, who is a legend in Washington, DC. Artist, writer, curator, educator, astrologer, former Hirshhorn staffer, committed hippie, he wears many hats in the art world. For singular, poetic and classically eccentric reasons, Mahoney has requested a one-night only exhibition of his photographic works that were inspired by his revisiting the site of his first acid trip 40 years ago.
He notes, "Putting yourself under the controlling influence of a substance like LSD that transforms and commands your awareness is both a challenge and a surrender. Art, like psychedelic chemicals, often works that way, but you, the viewer, can usually regulate the intensity of the art experience.
It's your right. And it's also the job of the artist to induce you to move across your waking state into an Unknown, a rich uncertainty, with the moral intention that the uncertainties and certainties artists express come from the real purpose of artists in humanity: artists are scouts, spies, watch-persons, as Kafka suggested. So this presentation could be hopefully honest messages from an outpost in the Unknown...
Ice structures from Northern Virginia parks and battlefields are real-world abstractions, and, like orchids, may be indisputable evidence for a graphically gifted, consciously creative universe. On acid, us acidheads pretty much thought that was about right... Nature creates evidence - and metaphors - for a creative intelligence in its design, if you look into it. On acid, it's really obvious.
And these rock formations? As a very granular sandstone, they were unusually available as tablets for natural inscriptions... Gods & monsters talking..."
Sorry, no LSD will be served.
image above: J.W. Mahoney, Omnivorous, digital print, 17" x 21.5", ed. 1/3, 2010