Lady In Burqa Eats Pizza

Wondermare Analysis

This vision is inspired by a particular strain of British “psychedelic” art originating as far back as the late plays of Shakespeare (perhaps most exactly in The Tempest) the mystical etchings of William Blake (considered mad by contemporaries for his diverse and symbolically rich corpus which embraced imagination) and running through 19^th Century on to the absurdist dreamscapes of Lewis Carroll, the elaborate fantasy worlds of J.R.R Tolkein (The Hobbit et al.) and T.H. White (The Once and Future King), the enduring classics of children’s literature of A. A. Milne (Winnie the Pooh), Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows), and J. M. Barrie (Peter Pan) before finally reaching its modern apex with the psychedelic scene of 60’s London most popularly enunciated by the Beatles with their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, their subsequent animated film Yellow Submarine and the characteristic set design found in Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner.  As opposed to the US version, in Britain during the late 1960’s, psychedelia was less associated with politics, rather it found its cultural impetus as an underground movement reacting against the prejudices and hypocrisies of the British class system. Arguably, the British approach to psychedelia was a more enlightened one, though we have a suspicion it may have been a reaction to grey weather and a celebration of short but glorious summers.  Visually associated with bright colors and elaborate yet harmonious arrangements governed by a disciplined whimsy, or a playful industry – this scene excites the imagination, pleases the eye, and aims to evoke the cheerful light of a simpler time, perhaps recalling a carefree childhood with the privilege and power of maturity.  Images of such happiness include luminescent flowers, colors of quaint lusciousness, and costumes of familiar roles (military and royal or common) worn in radical circumstances:  imagine atmospherics combining cotton candy parasols crossed with turquoise tandem bicycles, or zeppelin like awnings colored in the manner of hot air balloons.  Using the rainbow as our fundamental palette, other colorings include a girlish pink cut with elephant grey and the deep, shiny black associated with beetles, bowlers, and Bentleys, silverware of significant heft, and napkins of fine clothe. 

Rick Raguso

A Figment Moment

Figment took us to Picnic Point on the south end of Governors Island. What a beautiful location with windswept trees and ocean spray and enormous barges passing so close it feels like you could reach out and touch them.

http://figmentnyc.org/2009/figment-2009/projects-artists/

Synopsis

Wondermare is based on the notion that much of the behavioral conditioning programmed in our subconscious is the unhealthy byproduct of a world out of balance, a "house of cards" on the brink of catastrophe; the truth of which is obscured from us by our own myopic pursuits and illusions.

The exhibition uses as its setting the story of Alice in Wonderland precisely because it contains anecdotes about the rites of passage into adulthood. The tale consistently resists an easily defined linear structure and at the same time confronts the confusing and often nonsensical rituals that we must travel through in order to obtain a civilized or adult persona in the world we see through our looking glass.

Immersed in an eight-screen video landscape, gallery visitors will feel compelled to address the parts of themselves that are hidden, repressed and denied. As an interactive exhibition, the show creates the opportunity for a psychological rebooting or do over, where visitors will have another chance at addressing their own rights of cultural passage that they may or may not have gotten right the first time around.

Wondermare July 8th

Vignettes

The Beginning
The Birth of this Moment

Bullies
The Wondermare characters threaten and tease the viewer as they walk the gallery.

Meet The Terrorist - Division of Terror Control
Turn in your friends for your own safety. A ticking time bomb.

Astroheroes - Be The Hero You Were Meant To Be
When you get to the chroma key screen act out your inner hero.

My Breasts: My Rights - My Rites
A young person can shoot a gun but viewing love making in a movie is illegal?!

Feed The World
Juxtaposing the insulated rich across the gallery from the impoverished masses

The Zombie Minority
Get a real sense of what it's like to be immersed in Zombie culture.

Mad Hatters Tea Party (My Favorite Bachanal)
Tea cups filled with paint, anthropomorphic beings, beer bongs and a hedonistic orgy.

Smell The Flowers
Live in the moment with the blooming flowers blowing in the breeze.

Text Yourself To Death
The white rabbit leads us on a journey of people compulsively texting

We're At War! With Ourselves
Small children run around with toy guns imprinting evil deeds.

Body Dismorphia
Society doesn't like fat people and neither should you!

My First Time
A sexual experience

Religious Icons
Meet the cast of characters

The End
Design your own Tombstone

Synopsis

Wondermare is based on the notion that much of the behavioral conditioning programmed in our subconscious is the unhealthy byproduct of a world out of balance, a "house of cards" on the brink of catastrophe; the truth of which is obscured from us by our own myopic pursuits and illusions.

The exhibition uses as its setting the story of Alice in Wonderland precisely because it contains anecdotes about the rites of passage into adulthood. The tale consistently resists an easily defined linear structure and at the same time confronts the confusing and often nonsensical rituals that we must travel through in order to obtain a civilized or adult persona in the world we see through our looking glass.

Immersed in an eight-screen video landscape, gallery visitors will feel compelled to address the parts of themselves that are hidden, repressed and denied. As an interactive exhibition, the show creates the opportunity for a psychological rebooting or do over, where visitors will have another chance at addressing their own rights of cultural passage that they may or may not have gotten right the first time around.