On painting after dropping acid: “The paintings are very much about what it was like for me to go beyond the surfaces of things – to concentrate so intently on the fine detail and structure of a meditational object – on any object, really, any perceptual reality – that all of its surface, sensory qualities, its conventional meanings and uses, its psychological associations and conceptual significance, all begin to move, breathe, vibrate, break up and fall away. That’s when you start to realise how much of ‘ordinary’ reality is nothing more than a subjective mental construct.”
On Conceptual Art and Psychedelia : “Here’s how the continuum looks to me: Realism depicts the objects of ordinary conventional reality; Impressionism depicts the perceptual qualities of those objects broken up into light and colour; Pointillism depicts the perceptual and formal qualities of these objects broken up even further into colour and minutely small forms; Psychedelia depicts the cracking open of all of those perceptual and formal qualities; Minimalism expresses the underlying geometric essences behind those objects and their qualities; Pop Art depicts those objects shorn of the conventional conceptual that give them meaning; Conceptual Art expresses the breaking up and reconstitution of those conventional conceptual schemes and the objects (and subjects) embedded in them. At least that’s the continuum within which I’d place my own psychedelic work. For me the transition from psychedelic painting to Minimalism to Conceptual Art was a very straight road to walk.”
Adrian Piper Vanilla Nightmares #9, 1986. Charcoal on New York Times page, 22 x 27.5 in.
Adrian Piper Village Voice Ad No. 12, Published 8/29/1974.
Adrian Piper, My Calling (Card) No.1 (1986-Present)
