Marshall Arisman "The Ayahuasca Cave"

Sacred Gallery

poster for Marshall Arisman "The Ayahuasca Cave"

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Sacred Gallery presents the latest work from the Ayahuasca Series by Marshall Arisman, internationally known painter, illustrator, educator and storyteller. To quote Paul Theroux, “A Shaman is an enchanter. A Shaman is a priest, a doctor. He’s someone you would drink Ayahuasca with in an Equatorial rainforest and have hallucinations with. Marshall Arisman, as I perceive him, is definitely a Shaman, an enchanter.”

In Marshall Arisman’s latest body of work, he explores his first installation, transforming the gallery into a cave by large –scale drawings created on Tarlatan, a translucent cotton weave used to clean etching plates in the printmaking process. The fabric is folded. The image on the front surface automatically transfers to the second layer in the drawing process.

The Ayahuasca Cave was inspired by visiting the caves in the Dordogne region of France in 1970. It has taken over thirty years for the artist to visualize the experience. As Lewis Hyde said “Whoever the gods of fortune are, they will drop things in our path, but if you search for those things you will not find them.” The following is an excerpt from the artist’s journal.

“With no specific destination in mind, I rented a car in Paris and drove south. The year was 1970. My wife, accustomed to my purposeless wanderings looked at the map. “We could go see the cave drawings,” she said.

The Dordogne region of France houses Paleolithic art done over 17,000 years ago. Lascaux, the region’s most famous cave was closed to the public in 1963. The carbon dioxide produced by 1,200 visitors a day at Lascaux had visibly damaged the paintings. By 1970 numerous other caves were still open to the public but largely unattended.

I pulled into the parking lot of Grotte de Font-de Gaume, a showplace of Magdalenian engravings and paintings from around 14000 B.C. A lone Volvo sat baking in the noon-day sun. Six Swedish tourists wearing double-knit Irish sweaters were hunkered down near the cave entrance. The tour guide motioned for us to join the group. Fifty meters into the cave we squeezed, single file, through a meter wide passageway covered in drawings. The guide, raising his lantern, encouraged us to “pet the animals”. The contour of the limestone walls created bar reliefs. Rib cages swelled, legs receded and skulls floated under the skin. Gasping for air, animal forms emerged from the cracks in the limestone as if giving birth. Accompanied by polychrome bisons, horses and deer rendered in black and ochre we entered the main chamber of the cave.

A frieze of five bison dominated the 50 meter long gallery surrounded by panels of superimposed drawings done by successive generations of cave artists. A reindeer in the foreground shared legs with a large bison. I stood in awe. We had blundered into a sacred place where we not only didn’t belong but were not welcome.

As my eyes scanned the wall the animals began to move. Feeling disorientated I placed the palm of my hand on a life-size bison to steady myself. Despite the drop in temperature the animal form generated tremendous heat. The energy put into the drawing by the shaman was still there. I felt the actual sense of a presence that surrounded me. The shaman of that cave were all in that room.

Many people believe that our ancestors are watching us without being seen. The invisible psychic presence in that room was real. I felt, I knew that the surface of that cave was a curtain between the material world and the Spirit world. The shaman, with the aid of an animal helper, passed through the wall and upon returning illustrated their journey on the cave wall. Members of the tribe could see the journey with their eyes and feel the energy of the journey with their hands.

To quote David Lewis-Williams, “One of the uses of the caves was for some sort of vision questing. Certainly, the sensory deprivation afforded by the remote, silent and totally dark chambers, such as the Diverticule of the Felines in Lascaux and the Horses Tail in Altamira induces altered states of consciousness. In their various stages of altered states, questors sought, by sight and touch, in the folds and cracks of the rock face, visions of powerful animals. It is as if the rock were a living membrane. Behind the membrane lay a realm inhabited by spirit animals and spirits themselves.”

I emerged from the cave slightly terrified. I had tapped into an ancient memory. It would take another thirty years to try and visualize that experience.”

Arisman has been the chair at the School of Visual Arts in New York City for forty seven years and continues to inspire graduate students in the art of personal storytelling. In 2011 he was inducted into the Art Directors Hall of Fame as an Artist/Educator. His work is in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, the New York Historical Society, the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, the Guang Dong Museum of Art, Telfair Museum of Art, as well as many private and corporate collections.

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Schedule

from April 05, 2012 to April 30, 2012

Opening Reception on 2012-04-05 from 19:00 to 22:00

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