Psychedelic Lines
John Zotos
Jim Lambie?s installation in the main concourse of the Dallas Museum of Art, Thirteenth Floor Elevator, continues his exploration of the use of modernist art tropes as a means to critique contemporary culture through the museum/gallery space. Specifically, Lambie’s art mobilizes the radicalism of 60s drug psychedelia and altered perceptual experience. No mere conflation, the rise of drug culture coincided with the rise of Pop art and an awareness of the emerging cultural dependence on media, images, and sensations, each hinging on the notions of perception and consciousness as conduits to, and descriptive of, contemporary subjects.
A minimalist matrix forms the ground to the entire installation. In Zobop, multicolored strips of commercial vinyl tape form a site-specific stripe painting taped to the floor of the museum concourse that flows into the contemporary galleries that house his exhibition. Lambie has made several versions of Zobop to suit varying situations. Here, the stark modernist orthogonal in the architecture of the DMA are undermined by the Op art effects of the varying lines of color in the pattern such that a vibrating sensation coupled with vertigo accompanies any visitor traversing the several inclines in the floor. Flat surfaces at times seem concave, at others convex or compressed, debunking the authority of the modern, yet classical, architectural style of the museum. Through the use of line, Lambie has undermined the assumptions to order that "line" promotes.
By extending the line as critique notion to sculpture in Psychedelic Soul Stick, Lambie used multicolored threads to wrap a bamboo pole. Inside the threads hide symbolic objects with pop culture references such as a Carmen Miranda photograph, parts of a china cup, and earrings. These objects, though hidden, take on talismanic overtones transforming the stick into a magical staff. Metaphorically, the staff as art implies a performative aspect, activating its use as a conduit of energy implied by Lambie’s placement of it. Leaning against the wall, with the tip in contact with Zobop, its engagement with the space suggests the transfer of energy into the installation. Lambie in fact may have used Psychedelic Soul Stick in an actual club setting during one of his gigs as a DJ.
A use of splattered paint references modernist abstraction in 18 Carrots. This orange and green found-object sculpture rests on a white pedestal attached to the "museum white" wall of the gallery. Real carrots with their long green reeds lay over the pedestal pointing toward a wall treated to strewn orange pigment that Lambie allowed to drip down to the floor, mixing in with the obstinate order of the vinyl stripes. Not only does the piece act as a formal contrast to the installation due to the chaotic handling of the paint and the form/anti-form line dichotomy, it also introduces a distinctly psychedelic shade to Lambie’s color range. Not only is the orange absent from the vinyl stripes, it also summons a 60s spectrum sensibility, promoting thoughts in the direction of hallucinations and dreams. Why carrots? One explanation may arise through references to Lewis Carroll’s frantic rabbit in his escapist, anti-logical stories in Through the Looking Glass; while an art reference could be found in Joseph Beuys’ performance How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare. Arguably, Lambie channels more from Carroll’s playfulness and humor than Beuys’ serious shamanism.
In Lambie’s world popular culture and high art collide, the product of which gives further contextual reach to the artistic elements of modernism. His strategies challenge, and subsequently help the viewer to identify with a social meaning that includes subjects as a group, eschewing isolation while seeking community.
