"I was no longer in the water but rather I was high above the water and looking down upon it. The sky, that had been so grey and lowering, was iridescent with indescribable beauty.
Waves of ecstatic and delicate color vibrated around me and lulled me to a sense of peace beyond comprehensions." - Robert Kyle Beggs Case-Book of Astral Projection
"I think the descriptions of near-death experience, descriptions of light phenomena in the dream, and in waking ... I don't pretend to have a religious art, but I have to say, it is artists who worked that territory from the very beginning." —James Turrell, 1999
“CLEAR” brings together works by twenty-three contemporary artists exploring subjects reflective, transitory, crystalline, or celestial by traversing concepts of clarity sourced from art history, science, and esotericism. The late 1960s saw the emergence of the California Light and Space Movement, tangential to Minimalism, with protagonists such as James Turrell, Larry Bell, and De Wain Valentine. They created works predicated on the extrasensory potential of light by using the space within and around it as an immersive frame, heightening the viewer’s awareness of the mind-body experience. “CLEAR” imagines a continuation of this narrative, suggesting astral projection—leaving one’s physical body to inhabit an “astral” one—as an endgame. The exhibition explores apertures both material and conceptual, as well as the rich sensibilities that visualize the science and fantasy of aesthetic experience and popular imagination.
via Gagosian
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