Art After Psychedelics and a Dose of Loneliness
Photo by Mark Hanauer
From Ayahuasca purges and melting rainbows, Aaron Axelrod‘s art comes to life through live performances and video projections. As a mixed media artist, he works within multiple mediums including sculptures, paints, and lights. His latest work emerges from combining all of these mediums into visually-stimulating interactions.
In Melting Rainbows Axelrod uses his face and various body parts to press up against a transparent plexiglass surface in order to create psychedelic drips and effects that are then live projected onto a theater screen. This particular live art experience is often site-specific and purposefully set up for an audience in spaces like the Vortex Dome Theater in LA. While Axelrod’s Ayahuasca Purge fuses music, video projection mapping, and sculpture to showcase a new-found perspective through dancing digital images that are the closest representation to what you may experience on Ayahuasca. He hopes to impart that discovery element. The piece itself radiates in the dark and contains a vibratory energy. He says, “When I tried Ayahuasca for the first time I discovered more about myself, embraced the universe, the meaning of life, the truth. It makes you a stronger person because you’re confronting your fears head on but you can also experience dark moments.”
Despite the explosion of color he tends to work with, a lot of Axelrod’s work is influenced by the darkness of David Lynch. In addition to Lynch, Dr. Seuss, old school Disney movies, and contemporary artists like Vik Muniz have also inspired Axelrod in some way, shape or form. But above all, psychedelics have played a strong role in Axelrod’s life and art. You can see it play out in the colorful and uninhibited process he takes on.
Ayahuasca Purge photo by Mark Hanauer
MELTING RAINBOWS **the film** HD // Aaron Axelrod from Aaron Axelrod on Vimeo.
To learn more about the artist click here.