​Reflections from Damaged Life: An exhibition on Psychedelia

Reflections from Damaged Life: An exhibition on Psychedelia has set out to question what psychedelic art might be and reassess what the artistic problems it poses are.

Pierre Huyghe L’expe´dition scintillante, Act 2 (light show), 2002
Pierre Huyghe L’expe´dition scintillante, Act 2 (light show), 2002

At its heart is this straight-forward interrogation, a necessary route through what curator Lars Bang Larsen sees as years of misinterpretation.

Pierre Huyghe L’expe´dition scintillante, Act 2 (light show), 2002
Pierre Huyghe L’expe´dition scintillante, Act 2 (light show), 2002

Raven Row gallery, which is hosting the show, says, ‘Rather than through the framework of counterculture and the hippie scene, it focuses on how specific artistic practices inflected the drug culture and its concepts of transformation and non-human perception.’

O¨yvind Fahlstro¨m The Little General (Pinball Machine), 1967–8
O¨yvind Fahlstro¨m The Little General (Pinball Machine), 1967–8

Hopefully everyone reads the show as the work of a group of unapologetic experimentalists, but you might well see it as the work of the silly or the supercilious.

The evolution of the psychedelic is as far-reaching as it is far out, and this show takes a look at the development of psychedelia in Europe, Scandinavia, Latin America and Japan.

Marta Minuji´n in front of her work Importacio´n / Exportacio´n at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires in 1968 Courtesy the artist
Marta Minuji´n in front of her work Importacio´n / Exportacio´n at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires in 1968 Courtesy the artist

Reflections from Damaged Life: An Exhibition on Psychedelia runs from 26 September – 15 December at Raven Row, 56 Artillery Lane, E1

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