In Alejandro Jodorowsky’s landmark 1973 surrealist film The Holy Mountain, a thief ascends a great tower on a golden hook. At the top of the tower, in a rainbow throne room, an alchemist transmutes elements from the thief’s body into solid gold. Later, on a path to enlightenment, the thief and the alchemist assemble a party that treks through a world filled with the bizarre, grotesque, profound and obscene.
Amid it all, though, is a persistent motif: Creation is not bound by the physical world. Gold can come from flesh, eternal life from holy mountains, enlightenment from the absurd. This is the backbone of alchemy, and it’s something that Brad Kunkle has been pondering for his new show at Arcadia Contemporary.
“The show is called alkame. This is how the word alchemy appears in a dictionary for pronunciation. I thought it was fitting because it’s kind of a literal manifestation of a meaning of the word. Alchemy is an ancient branch of natural philosophy—a magical process of creation and transformation with the pursuit to attain a perfected final state,” Kunkle says from his New York studio. “On a broad scope, I’ve been exploring the idea of magical thinking and alchemy, which led me to literal spell casters…the history of witchcraft, etc. And all of that looped me back to the broader initial fascination with magical thinking and alchemy. Whether someone is a practicing witch or a catholic priest, or even just someone who believes in serendipity, the commonality is that they all believe that there is an invisible world that can affect their lives. Magical thinking is a strong force that has been a part of the human story since the dawn of time, and it’s an endless source of inspiration for me.”
Denne historien er fra April 2020-utgaven av American Art Collector.
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Denne historien er fra April 2020-utgaven av American Art Collector.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Guardians of the Temple – Simon Dinnerstein reflects on The Fulbright Triptych 50 years later.
The Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State University exhibits Simon Dinnerstein's The Fulbright Triptych haunts the visual lexicon of 20th century American representational art. Fifty years have passed since Dinnerstein completed the painting in 1974.
A City Perspective
Leslie Gaduzo has always been interIested in art. Since childhood, he has been drawing constantly, from single point perspective drawings at age 10 to complex architectural drawings.
Living Legacy
The Butler Institue hosts Allied Artists of America's 110th Annual Juried Exhibition.
Elegant yet Approachable
The second edition of the RTIA Show presents even more art to explore and expanded special programming.
Figuratively Speaking
New York has always been an epicenter of artists on the edge of excellence, pushing the envelope and finding their voices.
JAMES AYERS: The Importance of Play
Like many artists, James Ayers' work took a turn during the Covid-19 pandemic. Seeing the enjoyment his kids took from playing with paint in his studio and exploring their creativity inspired him.
GINA MINICHINO: Playing with Food
Gina Minichino started her journey in visual arts because of Charles Schulz. \"He was my earliest influence for drawing and the reason I wanted to be a cartoonist,\" she says.
Island Light
The Cuttyhunk Island Artists' Residency is held in a sprawling, 100-year-old house on an island off the southern coast of Massachusetts.
Solitary Forms
Hogan Brown has been working with Arcadia Contemporary for two and half years and is excited to be featured in his first solo show at the gallery. He doesn't take for granted the many talented figurative painters Arcadia represents and is thrilled to be among them.
Living the Dream
Counterintuitively, David Gluck was a painter before taking up tattooing little more than a decade ago. While skin is a completely different substrate and ink a far cry from oil paint, the skills must be transferrable to some degree because there is a wait-time of nine months to get an appointment with him.