Feel the Out-of-Body in Disembodied @ Nicodim in Los Angeles

Installation view of DISEMBODIED. Image courtesy of Nicodim.

Isabelle Albuquerque / Liang Fu / Shana Hoehn / Rae Klein / Agnieszka Nienartowicz / James Owens / Daniel Pitín / Qian Qian / Nicola Samorì

Curated by Ben Lee Ritchie Handler

DISEMBODIED builds and continues conversations around the violence, ecstasy, and epiphany within out-out-body experiences as-seen from the perspective of those on the ground—the leaps of faith we take to believe those who say their souls depart while their bodies remain. The works in the exhibition cover a wide swath of allegorical and tangible disembodied states, including the spiritual, the telegraphic, the psychedelic, the dissociative-induced, artificial intelligences, and alien encounters.

DISEMBODIED is on view through February 17 @ Nicodim, 1700 S Santa Fe Avenue, #160, Los Angeles, CA 90021

Private Opening Of High Times, Curated By Richard Prince @ Blum & Poe Gallery In Los Angeles

Blum & Poe presents a collaboration between artist Richard Prince and the paragon of marijuana counterculture press, High Times magazine. Well known for his penchant for outsider aesthetics and subculture iconography, Prince works with High Times for the first time, lending original compositions from his Hippie Drawings series of the late 1990s/early 2000s for the September 2016 special Trippy issue. These drawings exemplify Prince’s practice of investigating the American collective unconscious and pursuing dualities – he mines the marginalized and commonplace, and then filters this content through a discerning, expressive, and painterly tradition. Extraterrestrial, polychromatic figures wielding joints smirk at their viewer; wild and joyful gestures that recall the artwork of children or channel the renderings of a psychedelic trip – Prince says of this series, “Being funny is a way to survive.” In conjunction with the launch of the special issue, Prince has curated a collection of historical High Times covers traversing the publication’s history from 1974-2014. The artist’s practice of gleaning inspiration from news and popular media well documented, here Prince selects covers from the magazine’s archives that reflect certain subjects commonly found in his oeuvre. On the occasion of the special edition issue launch, rolling papers designed by the artist will be produced, along with a marijuana strain. This presentation has been organized in cooperation with Green St. Agency. High Times opens July 26 and runs until July 30 at Blum & Poe Gallery in Los Angeles. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

The Lost Footage of Ken Kesey's Magic Ride

Psychologist Timothy Leary and Neal Cassady in Bus
Timothy Leary and Neal Cassady in MAGIC TRIP, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo © Allen Ginsberg, CORBIS.
Ken Kesey
right: Ken Kesey in MAGIC TRIP. Photo © Ted Streshinsky, CORBIS. right: The Bus in MAGIC TRIP. Photo © Ted Streshinsky, CORBIS.

In 1964, Ken Kesey, the famed author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” set off on a legendary, LSD-fuelled cross-country road trip to the New York World’s Fair. He was joined by “The Merry Band of Pranksters,” a renegade group of counterculture truth-seekers, including Neal Cassady, the American icon immortalized in Kerouac’s “On the Road,” and the driver and painter of the psychedelic Magic Bus. Kesey and the Pranksters intended to make a documentary about their trip, shooting footage on 16MM, but the film was never finished and the footage has remained virtually unseen. With MAGIC TRIP, Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood were given unprecedented access to this raw footage by the Kesey family. They worked with the Film Foundation, HISTORY and the UCLA Film Archives to restore over 100 hours of film and audiotape, and have shaped an invaluable document of this extraordinary piece of American history. Magic Trip opens this month.