October Gallery hosts Ira Cohen ~ 'Works from the Mylar Chamber'

Wednesday, 24 October 2007 00:51

LONDON - Ira Cohen is one of the most outstanding artists of our time. This exhibition will feature Cohen’s famous works from the Mylar Chamber which were created in the late 60's at his Lower East Side loft and are perhaps the most awesome body of surrealistic photographs ever. On exhibition 29 November 2007 to 21 January 2008 at October Gallery.

Mylar plastic, is a bendable mirror, which twists and swirls its subjects - reflected in his mirror, among others, were William S. Burroughs and Jimi Hendrix. The finished products are fantastical photographs of figures bathed in smoke, dressed in luscious velvets and lurid magical makeup.

Born in 1935 in New York City to deaf and mute parents, Cohen learnt to spell with his fingers when he was one. In 1961 he took a freighter to Tangier, where he was exposed to the cut-up technique by Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs (a literary technique in which a text is cut up at random and rearranged to create a new text.) He went on to publish a magazine devoted to exorcism called Gnaoua, and produce recordings of Trance music.

New York lured him back in the late 60’s and it was then that the culmination of the photographer’s fascination with the mirror came about. Located somewhere between Man Ray and Max Ernst, the Mylar photographs of Ira Cohen provide a wealth of archetypal images which are not only the real icons of the sixties, but also the icons of the future.

“Looking at these pictures is like looking through butterfly wings …” - Jimi Hendrix

Founded in 1978, the October Gallery is an art gallery dedicated to the appreciation of art from all cultures around the world. The Gallery exhibits and promotes art of the transvangarde - or trans-cultural avant-garde - that is to say, the work of artists who, whilst working at the forefront of their own respective cultures, assimilate into their work elements from other cultures as well. During the past twenty-one years, the Gallery has shown the work of such transvangarde artists as: Gerald Wilde, El Anatsui, William S. Burroughs, Emmanuel Taiwo Jegede, Kenji Yoshida, Aubrey Williams, Ablade Glover and Sokari Douglas Camp amongst many others. As well as exhibitions by individual artists, the Gallery also mounts group exhibitions that concentrate on the art produced in one particular area or culturally continuous region. Amongst these regional exhibitions have been shows devoted to the art and culture of : Tibet (1991), Trinidad & Tobago (1992), Mongolia (1993), the Horn of Africa (1994) Haiti (1995) South Africa (1996) the Yoruba Diasporas (1997) Oceania (1998) and Peru (1999). Future exhibitions will comprise a series of shows highlighting the contemporary art coming from shamanistic societies around the world.

Visit the October Gallery at : www.octobergallery.co.uk