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Hullucination As Practice
First Some housekeeping details before I write what is essentially a journal entry from my time working in France:
1 I made this group primarily as a journal to recap my work in France where hullicination played a large part in a series of 250 collages titled ZENPHYREMOS.
2 I would like for anyone stumbling upon this group to share any experiences they have had with hullucinations - in particular where the experience itself gave birth to a painting outside of one that may have been based on reality and then moved towards surrealism by means of technique.
3 The photo - to set the record straight - that I have used for this group is of a woman named Juana who had worked for me as a model when I was living in Villeurbanne and had helped me develop my set of collages - some of which had an obviously sexual nature.
Before I began the ZENPHYREMOS collection in the city of Lyon in 2006 I had only shown my collages twice, in Canada, spread out between 1994 and 2003. My earlier work was usually based on non emotional elements that I would find at restaurants and cut and paste together along with photocopies of my illustrations. Thus the work was usually based on design ideas and very rarely contained something from my personal life.
When I moved to Lyon in 2006 I met a woman named Juana with from whom I rented a room for 3 months. At this time I was working on a music album for which I had a notebook with some old music notes and small introductions to pieces of music I had started writing in Canada but not finished. I also had another book with tons of scraps and cut outs from Canadian magazines and coffee shops from Denmark which were left over from a photo shoot I did called VESTERPORT CAFFEINE that was based around the idea of 'disorientation'. The photographer whom I worked with was extreemely excited about the five large format prints of ours he had framed and wanted to hold an exhibition. 10 months after our shoot when the idea for the exhibition kind of dissipated, I sat down with Juana and showed her everything I had.
What she did was push me to begin reformatting all of these cuttings or 'elements' - of which their were about 80 or so collected for over 11 years. At the time I was not eating or sleeping properly at all. I would sleep about 4 to 5 hours a night and drink about 6 espressos minimum a day. That was a reduction from the 7 a day from my Canadian diet since 2003. In short my stomach was totally destroyed, I was emersed in a foreign country, and there was a degree of inspiration to look at in the city.
THE CORE REASON I HAVE MADE THIS DISCUSSION is to document where the name ZENPHYREMOS had come from. I woke up in the morning at Juana's house, she had gone out, and her house was quite messy. Before I had opened my eyes a voice said the word 'zenphyremos' in my head. The confusion, which later became 250 collages, arose from the fact that it was not my voice, it was distinctly, definitively, and totally unmistakeably a voice that I did not recognise, THEREFORE absolutely not my own inner voice. I write this hoping that a passing reader can agree that when you write a to do list to go shopping you might say in your head 'i need milk, and batteries' (or something in that vein) AND THEN YOU WRITE THAT DOWN. Right so to nail home the point I had heard a auditory hullucination - which does not happen often. To further confirm this point it should be clear that my paintings that are named in something that looks spanish but is not spanish at all - are words I make up as a sort of admiration of mediterranean culture which was apparent in my work even back in 1994, many moons before now. ZENPHYREMOS HAD NO RELATION AT ALL.
I felt to some degree disturbed. I got up and wrote down the word on a piece of paper. ARE YOU INTERESTED IN HULLUCINATION???? Well you will enjoy what follows. I walked around the room for 20 minutes looking at the paper. Bad sleep - my stomach is fucked - Ive been breathing espresso for about 4 years, my personal life is already .... This stupid word look slike it is jumping off the page. It looks like a living being that is the messenger of the fucking devil. It was only two nights prior that I had seen my pasta moving on my plate like insects realising that I am losing my mind. Even worse there are French voices saying words like 'mauvaise' in my head which is not a good feeling when you are overseas.
So I decided fuck it. If the stupid page is the messenger of the devil I'm going to draw the bastard. I turned the word into a calligraphic format by simply drawing around the word in a sort of design method. |Basically to create a logo. I then photocopied it locally on coloured paper. Then I cit it like cutting an insect in biology class and began to pasting it on another acard board. Out came the book with all the 'elements' or found cuttings , themselves with over 10 years of travel history, no relation to Lyon or to life in France. Juana came home and asked if I could photograph her. Eventually between the espresso and the apartment which was like something out of a fucking Cronenberg film things got messy. So one week later I asked Juana if I could use the printoffs from the camera for my collages. She said yes. A marriage made in hell. An artists dream. After 3 weeks I had made precisely 250 collages. I know because they were numbered. Many of them featured small designs and motifs that I had seen crawling on Juana's wall. What was real and what was not real began to break down by degrees and the cracks inbetween became the finished pieces. Of the 250 exactly 80 stayed in France with a private collector who did not pay me to much. I showed 10 in a small one week exposition at the Autre Cote Du Pont, the remaining came back to England and were used for the video named ULYSSES ON THE LOVE CANAL which is avialable to view on this magazine.
What I find interesting the cultivation of hullucination as a method rather than an accident. A forced method as a way of seeing at the subject being painted. From within that experience to remove the isolated object that is itself the hullucination or the thing that is appearing from within what can be seen as a everyday item such as a wall or a table. To then remove that hullucination and store it in permanent memory by sketching it very quickly. Then use the sketch as the core shape or subject to be painted. To place in the centre of the frame for the viewr the very thing that has made a break from reality. This is the sound check that I am reffering to and the reason why not all artists wish to change who they are to speak with a patron or collector if they know they are able to see something original.
Any thoughts or shared experiences from other artists here on Artreview would be welcome because at the end of the day - it is non'conformist methods that make the act of not only art making but also art viewing, interesting.
Written by Luke Gilliam
1 I made this group primarily as a journal to recap my work in France where hullicination played a large part in a series of 250 collages titled ZENPHYREMOS.
2 I would like for anyone stumbling upon this group to share any experiences they have had with hullucinations - in particular where the experience itself gave birth to a painting outside of one that may have been based on reality and then moved towards surrealism by means of technique.
3 The photo - to set the record straight - that I have used for this group is of a woman named Juana who had worked for me as a model when I was living in Villeurbanne and had helped me develop my set of collages - some of which had an obviously sexual nature.
Before I began the ZENPHYREMOS collection in the city of Lyon in 2006 I had only shown my collages twice, in Canada, spread out between 1994 and 2003. My earlier work was usually based on non emotional elements that I would find at restaurants and cut and paste together along with photocopies of my illustrations. Thus the work was usually based on design ideas and very rarely contained something from my personal life.
When I moved to Lyon in 2006 I met a woman named Juana with from whom I rented a room for 3 months. At this time I was working on a music album for which I had a notebook with some old music notes and small introductions to pieces of music I had started writing in Canada but not finished. I also had another book with tons of scraps and cut outs from Canadian magazines and coffee shops from Denmark which were left over from a photo shoot I did called VESTERPORT CAFFEINE that was based around the idea of 'disorientation'. The photographer whom I worked with was extreemely excited about the five large format prints of ours he had framed and wanted to hold an exhibition. 10 months after our shoot when the idea for the exhibition kind of dissipated, I sat down with Juana and showed her everything I had.
What she did was push me to begin reformatting all of these cuttings or 'elements' - of which their were about 80 or so collected for over 11 years. At the time I was not eating or sleeping properly at all. I would sleep about 4 to 5 hours a night and drink about 6 espressos minimum a day. That was a reduction from the 7 a day from my Canadian diet since 2003. In short my stomach was totally destroyed, I was emersed in a foreign country, and there was a degree of inspiration to look at in the city.
THE CORE REASON I HAVE MADE THIS DISCUSSION is to document where the name ZENPHYREMOS had come from. I woke up in the morning at Juana's house, she had gone out, and her house was quite messy. Before I had opened my eyes a voice said the word 'zenphyremos' in my head. The confusion, which later became 250 collages, arose from the fact that it was not my voice, it was distinctly, definitively, and totally unmistakeably a voice that I did not recognise, THEREFORE absolutely not my own inner voice. I write this hoping that a passing reader can agree that when you write a to do list to go shopping you might say in your head 'i need milk, and batteries' (or something in that vein) AND THEN YOU WRITE THAT DOWN. Right so to nail home the point I had heard a auditory hullucination - which does not happen often. To further confirm this point it should be clear that my paintings that are named in something that looks spanish but is not spanish at all - are words I make up as a sort of admiration of mediterranean culture which was apparent in my work even back in 1994, many moons before now. ZENPHYREMOS HAD NO RELATION AT ALL.
I felt to some degree disturbed. I got up and wrote down the word on a piece of paper. ARE YOU INTERESTED IN HULLUCINATION???? Well you will enjoy what follows. I walked around the room for 20 minutes looking at the paper. Bad sleep - my stomach is fucked - Ive been breathing espresso for about 4 years, my personal life is already .... This stupid word look slike it is jumping off the page. It looks like a living being that is the messenger of the fucking devil. It was only two nights prior that I had seen my pasta moving on my plate like insects realising that I am losing my mind. Even worse there are French voices saying words like 'mauvaise' in my head which is not a good feeling when you are overseas.
So I decided fuck it. If the stupid page is the messenger of the devil I'm going to draw the bastard. I turned the word into a calligraphic format by simply drawing around the word in a sort of design method. |Basically to create a logo. I then photocopied it locally on coloured paper. Then I cit it like cutting an insect in biology class and began to pasting it on another acard board. Out came the book with all the 'elements' or found cuttings , themselves with over 10 years of travel history, no relation to Lyon or to life in France. Juana came home and asked if I could photograph her. Eventually between the espresso and the apartment which was like something out of a fucking Cronenberg film things got messy. So one week later I asked Juana if I could use the printoffs from the camera for my collages. She said yes. A marriage made in hell. An artists dream. After 3 weeks I had made precisely 250 collages. I know because they were numbered. Many of them featured small designs and motifs that I had seen crawling on Juana's wall. What was real and what was not real began to break down by degrees and the cracks inbetween became the finished pieces. Of the 250 exactly 80 stayed in France with a private collector who did not pay me to much. I showed 10 in a small one week exposition at the Autre Cote Du Pont, the remaining came back to England and were used for the video named ULYSSES ON THE LOVE CANAL which is avialable to view on this magazine.
What I find interesting the cultivation of hullucination as a method rather than an accident. A forced method as a way of seeing at the subject being painted. From within that experience to remove the isolated object that is itself the hullucination or the thing that is appearing from within what can be seen as a everyday item such as a wall or a table. To then remove that hullucination and store it in permanent memory by sketching it very quickly. Then use the sketch as the core shape or subject to be painted. To place in the centre of the frame for the viewr the very thing that has made a break from reality. This is the sound check that I am reffering to and the reason why not all artists wish to change who they are to speak with a patron or collector if they know they are able to see something original.
Any thoughts or shared experiences from other artists here on Artreview would be welcome because at the end of the day - it is non'conformist methods that make the act of not only art making but also art viewing, interesting.
Written by Luke Gilliam
Tags: abstract, art, methods, symbolism
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