An experimental group installation project prepared as a part of the project "Madman's Month"
This event is dedicated to the work of MD. Milan Hausner, MD. Stanislav Drvota MD, Ludvík Šváb and Phdr.Václav Pinkava – psychologists and psychiatrists who contributed to better understanding of therapy and altered states of mind.
"Psychonaut: One who "trips" or embarks on shamanic odysseys of discovery in the universe of the mind; a mental voyager. Key words: psychic health and illness, Outsider Art, psychic drawing/painting, art therapy, rebirth, psychedelic experiences, hypnosis, automatic hypnotic drawing, works of children and criminals, ornaments, illusions, visions, hallucination, paraimages, lucid dreaming, borderline creativity.
The categories of naive art, art brut, and insane or eccentric art, which shade into various and further categories of neo-primitive or urban-primitive art – all these ways of categorizing and labelling art remain senseless: that is, not only ultimately useless but also essentially unsensual, unconnected to body and desire. What really characterizes all these art forms? Not their marginality in relation to a mainstream of art/discourse – for heaven's sake, what mainstream? what discourse? If we were to say that there's a "post-modernist" discourse currently going on, then the concept "margin" no longer holds any meaning.
Hakim Bey
THE CONCEPT: Exhibition (paintings, signs, drawings, collages, pictures, photography, diagrams and diary entries) does not draw a line between works of professional and other or outsider artists. Exhibition will present the works of many mentally gifted and creative people: psychiatry patients, profesional artists, therapists, children, healers. Works comes from several private and institutional collections as well as with loans and works made at the spot. Exposition contains wide spectre of images: 1. created during intoxication with psychotropic substances (LSD or else), works created "without control", 2. during mediumic communication with another person or reality, 3. works where the accidental momentum is more important than the supervision on the "artistic ego", 4. scrawls, hieroglyphs, and other kinds of automatic drawing, and somnambul art and hypnosis induced paintings and "messages from other dimensions". These are the symbols and signs which emanated as a reflection on a boosting stream of thoughts and flow of images. Sometimes are made and used as an introspection or as psychological analysis. The chosen works are picked up because and exclusive on their originality, immediate quality and urgency of its message not on the fate or fame of their facilitator.
The project wishes to emphasize the permeation of border-line between terms and values as "normality" versus "abnormality", health versus illness, life and work of "professionals" and marginalized areas and outsiders groups (children, patients, madmen, homeless etc.) and to celebrate the "unusual" as a counterpart to standardized "normality". (The exhibition follows the 2002 exposition in Jelení Gallery of LSD therapy drawing from the collection of MD Hausner and MD Sobotkievičová).
Painting and drawing during the séance or intoxication releases memories and images from psychological background and depicts the states and processes that we are not aware of in the "normal" functional state of mind. Automatic or "obsessive" paintings and drawings are an important index of changes, where the control over the voluntary act is weakend. "Crazy", "irrational paintings", archetypes, mental/psychological patterns or "ornaments" reveal sometimes the vegetative or "lower" layers of personal or collective subconsciousness. Also the mediumic drawings draws similar characteristic: it is not intended to be primary an Aesthetic artefact by itself but comes to be as a blueprint, a trail of (sub)consciousness as an orientaion marc, and can increase the understanding between the hand, eye and mind.
A gallery is usually a place where one goes to admire someone else's works. This time bring your own drawings, scrawls and daubs with you and place them on the big board. The composition will be changing throughout the exhibition. The exhibited works are for sale and the profit will help the continuation of "Madman's Month".
Concept and coordination: Dana Recmanová, Miloš Vojtěchovský, Martin Jarolímek and Andrea Strudihradová, in cooperation with: Terezie Zemánková
Organized by
Czech association for psychological health
Jelení 9, 118 00 Prague 1, tel./fax: (+420) 224 212 656, info@capz.cz,
http://www.capz.cz/
In cooperation with: Školská 28 and MLOK association.
