Abrams was the former owner of Coda Gallery. The Coda Gallery was noted for its introduction of Psychedelic Art into the mainstream of American media consciousness. Abrams studied in Austria under the tutelage of Ernst Fuchs whose school and method of painting runs in an unbroken line of students and teachers from Albrecht Durer to the present. Dr. Fuchs' techniques and artistic concepts were profoundly stimulating. Abrams remained in Vienna an additional six months.
Mr. Abrams showed his work in Munich at the Gallery Hartmann and in Vienna at the Gallery Ariadne. Returning to the U.S. in 1973, he moved to upstate New York where he isolated himself for a period of experiment and development in the areas of painting, graphics and video. He also moved into a new area of self-expression: sculpture.
In 1975, Mr. Abrams went to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where working at the Shidoni foundry, he completed the development of the vocabulary of his new sculptural work.
Returning to New York City in 1976, Mr. Abrams established himself as an up-and-coming artist whose work is remarkable both for its technical quality and vision.
He begins his work with a series of loosely conceived juxtapositions and then discovers in those juxtapositions the metaphysical and cosmic concepts which are so often expressed in his art.
His works are sudden leaps into unknown spaces, into free-floating gravityless existences, where angels and demons, concepts and conceptions appear and disappear, where paradoxes proliferate and where each viewing of the painting may bring to the viewer a new and different cross combination of the ele- ments within.
His intentions are to create a painting viewable at any distance from inches to yards or dozens of yards; a piece having a vital life which is not dependent on a single point of view or a single conception of what was within.
A Jungian psychoanalyst, for example, has said that Mr. Abrams' works relate to certain archetypical experiences which are often seen in the dreams and fantasies of her patients; a physicist sees various assertions of the latest thinking about the gravitational effects of large bodies on space, time and the "shape" of the universe.
A biologist may see animals, or microbes, which seem to illustrate his own work. For many people, their concept perception of what Mr. Abrams does is based upon what they themselves are doing.
Mr. Abrams feels that he is an open channel. His work is not limited by his own knowledge. He is open to third forces; the first being himself, the second being the painting; and the third being the forces of unconscious cross-connection of all thoughts into one great mind. Having experienced this unity of all thought forms into the one thought form, Mr. Abrams is capable of reaching into the many areas of human experience, to snatch from the pool of the collective consciousness of all minds, extraordinarily acute perceptions.
The minds of some artists have evolved to the point where they are not so much fabricators as they are conduits. In the process of becoming a conduit, much comes through a person that is fundamentally beyond most people but yet remains startlingly clear to them.
Isaac Abrams is such an artist.
* GROUP SHOW 1967
o "The Visionaries" East- hampton Gallery, 56th St. N.Y.C.
* ONE MAN SHOW 1967
o Easthampton Gallery, 56th St., N.Y.C.
o Group Show, "Psychedelic Art" Galerie Bischofberger, Zurich, Switzerland
* 1968
o One Man Show Galerie Bischofberger, Zurich, Switzerland
* 1969
o One Man Show Easthampton Gallery, N.Y.C.
* 1970
o One Man Show Galerie Bischofberger, Zurich, Switzerland
* 1971
o Videotape exhibted at the Whiteney Mueum
* 1972
o Exhibition of Major Drawings Galerie Richard Hartmann, Munich Studies in Austria with Ernst Fuchs
* 1973
o One Man Show Jesse Burton Stone Gallery, Prince St., N.Y.C.
* 1974
o One Man Show Dworkin Gallery, Madison Ave., N.Y.C.
* 1976
o First Annual Shidoni Sculpture Exhibition, Shidoni Foundry, Santa Fe, New Mexico
also:
Participation in numerous other shows under the aegis of the Galerie Bischofberger in: London: Drawing Masters of the 20th Century, Tate Gallery Cologne Museum: New Directions Rome, Milan, Basel, St. Moritz
and:
Participation in many other group shows and exhibitions in N.Y.C., Woodstock, San Francisco, Majorca, Vienna
* OTHER ACTIVITIES 1965
o Owner and Director~CODA Gallery, 89 E. 10th St. Exhibitions of paintings, graphics, light works, multi- media events, theater pieces, dance and film and poetry series. Multi-media work with Patrick Firpo, Jacky Cassen and Rudi Stern and others Costume design for Todd Rundgren & Utopia Video work with The Grateful Dead, New Riders, and others Video Experimental program with Teletape Inc. Performance Pieces with the Word Band
http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/exhibitions/summeroflove/
http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/mccormick/mccormick10-4-07.asp DREAM WEAVER by Carlo McCormick
"Isaac Abrams, Psychedelic Pioneer," Sept. 8-Oct. 6, 2007, at Microcosm Gallery, 542 West 27th Street, New York, N.Y. 10001
The 40th anniversary celebrations for the halcyon Summer of Love have lapsed into but another mediated flashback. And if you have any reason left to wonder why epic masses swarmed the Whitney Museum’s psychedelic retrospective earlier this year while every iota of the critical establishment either panned the art of that era or did their best to ignore the populist hubbub, you might want to take some time to see an exhibition of paintings by Isaac Abrams, one of the great pioneers of ‘60s mind-expanding visuals still working today. Hurry up -- his show closes this weekend.
An early psychonaut, first exposed to LSD in 1965 at the Dream Laboratory in Brooklyn, Abrams discovered during his experimentations new meta-spiritual, trans-substantive, oceanic spaces beyond the grasp of reason that compelled him to pick up painting as the best mode to manifest this new realm. With the 1967 publication of the seminal (and to this date sole) critical study Psychedelic Art by Robert E.L. Masters and Jean Houston, Abrams literally became a cover boy for this new movement. His classic biomorphic oil-paintings reproduced on the book’s cover as well as inside forever seared the retinas of the post-Bob Hope generation that presumably was to change the world.
Recently included in Tate Liverpool’s "Summer of Love" exhibition, subsequently seen at the Whitney, Abrams’ work is now on view at Microcosm Gallery, the space for visionary art founded four years ago by artist Alex Grey. What’s amazing to see in this rare New York show, which features new works dating 2006-07, is just how much further Abrams has traveled into this all-enfolding pictorial field. Featuring two major triptychs, titled Trip Ticket I and Trip Ticket II, with the larger painting measuring more than 7 x 15 feet, along with three more modestly sized canvases, the universe Abrams explores is indeed as vast as the imagination and as deep as the soul.
More to the point, the new work reminds us that Isaac was a self-taught artist straining to the best of his abilities then to capture the most elusive of truths. Now, generations after the hype has fallen from bloom, Abrams has attained a technical accomplishment and metaphorical sophistication that, beyond its utterly mesmerizing effect, also provides potent reminder that, despite our ongoing frenzy over novelty, in many cases mid-career artists far surpass the glory of their youth. Abrams is a dream-weaver, a maximal visionary who can be appreciated as a flavor or understood for its greater nutritional substance.
Perhaps the weather will be off, or your dope dealer is out of town, or you have to wash your butt-length hair and you simply cannot make it to Isaac Abrams’ show this weekend. Just make it over to Microcosm anytime. The truth is the gallery regularly shows the kind of eye-candy you’ll be stumbling around that Chelsea neighborhood all day trying to grab. If by some chance you catch Microcosm while it’s between shows, drop in at the adjacent Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, a life-changing epic masterwork by the foremost visionary artist of our time, Alex Grey. And if you still haven’t seen that yet, well, I don’t think I like you one bit.
CARLO MCCORMICK is senior editor at Paper Magazine.
The work of Isaac Abrams seems to represent the default psychedelic style, if there is such thing; it features the flowery organic forms, the curvey fields reminding of sections of fractals from the Mandelbrod set, packed with concentric radiating ornaments, etc. (This painting of Abrams has been selected for the dust cover of the book.) Detlev Fischer http://www.oturn.net/probe/psychedelic-art.html
Publications
edit- Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era (Paperback)
by Christoph Grunenberg (Author)