June 6, 2013

⫷⫶ The Archaic Revival ⫶⫸

Today is the book launch of The Archaic Revival Review at Print Room in Rotterdam. Tomorrow June 7th, is the opening reception of The Archaic Revival group exhibition at Zic Zerp gallery curated by Dani Tull. This series features mostly works on paper by 35 artists from Los Angeles, Portland, and Rotterdam. It's been an amazing experience to be a part of this series since 2009. 

The term Archaic Revival is a reference to Terence Mckenna's 1992 book The Archaic Revival: Speculations on Psychedelic Mushrooms, the Amazon, Virtual Reality, UFOs, Evolution, Shamanism, the Rebirth of the Goddess, and the End of History, which hypothesizes that civilization's current state of distress has resulted in a grappling into our collective memory and the "morphic resonance" of our past 3.5 million years for steading metaphors that reconnect us to the entelechy of the planet: the Gaian mind. Terence Mckenna (1946–2000) was an American writer, philosopher, ethnobotanist, mystic and prophet who advocated paths of shamanism and the use of plant-based psychedelics as a means of increasing many forms of human awareness.

The Archaic Revival incorporates a wide array of cultural models and technologies such as shamanism, pantheism, pagan ritual, alchemy and magic as well as the 20th century avant-garde art movements of jazz, surrealism, and cubism (with its glorification of the primitive, modern anthropology). More recently, the expanding power of the internet and new media technologies have also become powerful tools that infuse and ignite ancient and contemporary understandings of tribal connectivity, inspiring a sense of global coherence, along with a brewing notion of a new cyber-mystical domain of "infomysticism" and "techgnosis". Furthermore, indigenous ceremonial medicines once misused as "psychedelic drugs" have become re-contextualized in Western culture as sacramental "entheogens", while tribal festivals, ecstatic dance, and a flourishing awareness of critical environmental issues and sustainable living have reawakened our traditional attitudes toward nature. Perhaps most interestingly, Mckenna's Archaic Revival signifies the eventual breakdown of the pattern of male dominance and hierarchy based on "animal organization," and takes us back to the ideal of a vegetational "Earth Goddess."

Fetal Attraction, the piece I made for this years Archaic Revival exhibition. Below is a sneak peek of my alien fetal stroke mushroom page in The Archaic Revival Review book.
Here are some pieces from the 2013 Archaic Revival exhibition.
Dani Tull
Eddie Ruscha and Astral Eyes aka Owl Eyes 
Brian Cooper
Klea McKenna and Landon Wiggs
Amanda Charchian
Pearl C. Hsiung



2011's Archaic Revival Group Exhibition 

My piece for the 2011 show was life size, 7x3'! By far the largest painting I've ever made. 
Here are some pieces from the 2011 Archaic Revival exhibition.
Eddie Ruscha & Pearl C. Hsiung 
Jim Shaw
Marnie Weber
Stephen McCarty
Owl Eyes and Charles Irvin
Pentti Monkkonen
Chromium Dumb Belle
Landon Wiggs sculptures to the right
Lovely ladies: Maximilla Lukacs, Miss KK, and Alia Penner/ Chromium Dumb Belle and I 

2009's Archaic Revival exhibition poster art by me and my "Wog on Mayan Temple Toilet." 
This group exhibition took place in Germany at the USCHI KOLB gallery.

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