PSYCHEDELIC SOLUTION x Jacaeber Kastor & Fred Tomaselli
I’ve never done psychedelics before, but movies have told me to assume that the final day of Burning Man may resemble artworks by Isaac Abrams, the brilliant H.R. Giger, Robert Crumb, Alton Kelly, Stanley Mouse, and Wes Wilson to name a few.
Unlike a majority of “outsider artists”, these artists who had works shown at the 30th Annual Outsider Art Fair are often both classically trained (H.R. Giger studied architecture and industrial design at the School of Applied Arts in Zurich) and their work is widely recognized (H.R. Giger won an Academy Award for the visual design of Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi horror film Alien).
Rest In Peace H.R. Giger.
Unlike those two characteristics. These works do fit right in with the rest of the outsiders whose brightly colored, outside the box imagery, and fun titled artwork dawned the walls of the overly crowded halls of the Metropolitan Pavilion. On this weekend, we were all outsiders together.
It’s hard to pick a favorite, but if you made me, this space was highlighted by the ink drawing by Edmund J. Sullivan titled ‘A Skeleton Amid Roses’ (ca. 1900) which served as the genesis of the logo for the Grateful Dead. It’s sheer beauty and attention detail with a stunningly gorgeous frame makes it the bell of the ball.
x Suzanne Williams
x Cristobal Gonzalez
x Alex Grey
x Olga Spiegel
Shout out to this crew for showing love to some underground artists who are often overlooked due to their medium or message, but nonetheless inspiring pop culture and artists for generations to come. And a special nod to the late great Timothy Whllie.
“Most closely associated with 1960s popular youth culture, when the widespread use of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and other hallucinogens inspired a generation to reimagine the universe and our place within it, psychedelic art in fact dates back to prehistoric times and has been part of an esoteric tradition of mind-expansion for centuries. This art is often made by self-taught artists or those whose self-awareness is profoundly idiosyncratic, and the resulting cosmology is imbued with mystical and spiritual concerns as well as fundamental questions involving perception and reality, situating it as a movement close to visionary art and outsider art vernaculars.”
Courtesy outsiderartfair.com
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