January 03 – February 29, 2020
The show’s title, “Reality Sandwiches,” comes from a poem by Beat poet Allen Ginsberg where he suggests the experience of reality and madness are intertwined. The poem was written in 1954 about fellow author William Burroughs and is a good distillation of the Beat’s take on art and life.
By Allen Ginsberg
The method must be purest meat
and no symbolic dressing,
actual visions & actual prisons
as seen then and now.
Prisons and visions presented
With rare descriptions
Corresponding exactly to those
of Alcatraz and Rose.
A naked lunch is natural to us,
We eat reality sandwiches.
But allegories are so much lettuce.
Don’t hide the madness.
– San Jose, 1954
I view the idea of reality sandwich as embracing the many layers of perception, or a lowering of the mental threshold of discrimination. The pieces in this show are visual representations of this layering of information – text and images – to the point where the original meaning is subverted towards its opposite.
The exhibit will be on display Jan. 3 through Feb. 29 at the gallery located at Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Salina.
Venue
Visual Voices at Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
901 Beatrice Street
Salina, KS 67401
Contact: (785) 825-6275
Website: http://uusalina.org/
