Berkeley Interview by Alice Dee & Lawrence Gerald
Alice Dee: Could you tell us a little bit about the exhibit.
Alex Grey: There's about twenty pieces here (at the JFK University Annex in Berkeley) of my work spanning about ten years. This piece is about 10 years old and is called Theologue which is the union of human and divine consciousness weaving the fabric of space-time in which the Self and its surroundings are embedded. What I have tried to do is to show the inner penetration between the physical dimensions and the more metaphysical dimensions. And in the body it shows up as the acupuncture meridians and points, auras, chakras, halos and things like that. This particular painting is one of my favorites because it came from an experience that I had some time ago, it was a high dose LSD experience and I was wearing blind folds seated in a lotus posture while staring into this device I invented called the mind-fold. It's just like a light type of blind fold which spaces open your eyes. So you look into total darkness. Somehow I was seeing an electric grid, that was like all along the horizon, it was just this incredible kind of perspective grid. It seemed to me that I was projecting this and at the same time I was seeing it outside. But I was in my head, it was very confusing and I felt that this is the loom of space-time. This is like when you dream, your dreaming in space, and so your always creating space, somehow our mind is creating space we're surrounded by. So how to visualize or recreate that was solved by putting this kind of seated Buddha here and having the horizon line the vanishing point of the horizon line of perspective be synonymous with the cone of perception that is spreading out. So this is appearing to project this space he's seated in.
Alice Dee: This reminds me a little bit of Carlos Castenada's writings on the assemblage point.
Alex: Right.
Alice Dee: The place in the energetic body that assembles the world and in a sense this point in the lines you display here is assembling the grid of the world and the pieces on the axis.
Alex: Exactly, that's what the mind cleverly does.
(Laughter)
Alice Dee: Well, that's wonderful, thank you so much Alex, it's been a real pleasure and it's an absolutely beautiful exhibit and I hope everyone makes the trip out here to experience it.
Alex: thank you, take care.
