What happens when you gaze at an image and then suddenly look away? You see an after image, but this time the colours are inverted.
According to wikipedia (on 22 January 2007, 23.20 GMT) "afterimages are caused when the eye's photoreceptors, primarily known as cone cells, adapt from the overstimulation and lose sensitivity". The latter - overstimulation and loss of sensitivity - have something to do with the content of the artworks displayed in this new space in Vyner Street: drugs. Artists Anonymous is a Berlin-originated group of 'clean' drug addicts who have moved to London to show their fascinating art. It's a clever and playful idea on a serious issue, the impact of drugs, and the successful battle to get rid of them:
First, there is the painting (picture at top here), depicting a hallucinatory scene of drug-infested sex, nonsense, games, dreams and nightmares - through inverted colours. It feels cold, like being 'on turkey' (detox) or in the wrong movie, on the wrong party, the wrong side of life. Then, the painting is photographed (picture above), and the process of shooting on negative film refers to the afterimage turning yellow into blue and green into magenta etc - negative into positive. Now the figures seem to be made of real flesh, there is warm glow, it feels better. However, the content is the same. But since the negative also shows the image mirror-invertedly, the photograph now appears to be wrong side (if it had text in there you'd realize). Right or wrong? Positive or Negative? That is the question....that survivors of drug addiction can only assess and answer for themselves.
Having tried to help a friend at university getting clean from heroin and cocain, I got some painfully close insights into this matter. I truly hope for Maya and her colleagues that the afterimage remains their daily reality, and that their memory of surreal hallucinations remain afterthoughts on seeing the wrong coloursof life. (Well done, and good luck for the next five years and beyond!)Art is better than any LSD! Vyner Street, E2
3 comments:
Hola Marcus!
I lived in London for almost three years and the thing I miss the most from the city is the variety of art and the respect that British people have for it (at least they respect and value their artists and museums more than we do in Argentina!).
Thanks to your blog I keep in touch with the London scene.
I also would like to congratulate you for your project on the postcodes. The images from Chiswick and Hammersmith touched my heart! That was my area!
Keep up with the great job!
Laura
Hola Laura (hope you read this since I don't have your email address)
Thank you so much for your email. I really appreciate it. I started this blog primarily to document the shows I really like, because I have seen thousands of art exhibitions since I started to get all crazy about contemporary art 15 years ago when I was 17. But most of the shows I wouldn't even remember what they were about if you said you have been to this and that show in city x apart from the artists name and maybe what he does. BUt what about my thoughts and feelings at the time. Therefore, I started this little project (years to late though but it's never too late...) for myself to have a web-based journal-style account of my explorations.
At the same time, a lot of friends called me on Fridays and Saturdays asking me for some instant recommendations for current art shows, when I brought the blog to blogger.com to be more public. The fact, that I now have a reader in Argentina makes touched MY heart in return.
By the way, I live in Hammersmith. Regarding the Post Code project, I didn't get much more going last year once I started to work as a consultant for culture change and leadership development and my fiance moved in from Boston soon thereafter. However, I am still committed to revive the project and hopefully I have the desired scale/critical mass by the end of this year. At the core of this project is my passion for the many different London neighbourhoods, and I guess I am influenced by 'walking artists' like Hamish Fulton and Richard Long. Another main point to walk and document this all by myself, is to create an antipode to all the web 2.0 collaboration/sharing/mesh-up projects and platforms on the web that deliberately carry no signature.
There will be an update on my blog this weekend, that's for sure...:-)
Greetings from London,
Marcus
I want to open a gallery which only exhibits paintings about the dark side of drugs and the implications that this terrible addiction brings along.
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