Hudson River School artists like Thomas Cole may never have seen it coming, but their corner of the country will soon be home to a center for psychedelic art, opening on the anniversary of the Wild Voyage’s full moon. to the LSD of the founders.
Entheon, a sanctuary of visionary art at the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, as it is known, is a much larger version of a place run by artist duo Alex and Allyson Gray who married in New York from 2004 to 2008. Write in the New York Timescritic Ken Johnson called the space a “curious, over-the-top combination of art gallery, New Age temple, and Coney Island sideshow.”
The couple paid $1.8million for the 19th-century three-story shed, located on 40 wooded acres in Wappingers Falls, New York, according to the New York Times, and raise another $3 million to complete work on the building. The center, which opens June 3, will feature artwork by the Grays and other psychedelic artists.
The center, which they consider a social sculpture in the lineage of artist Joseph Beuys, became an interfaith church in 2008.
Alex’s work has been featured on albums by bands such as Tool, the Beastie Boys and Nirvana, as well as venues such as the New Museum and the São Paulo Biennale. Allyson has exhibited at venues such as the OK Harris Gallery and Stux Gallery in New York, as well as the Islip Art Museum.
The new nonprofit comes at an important time for psychedelics. Michael Pollan’s bestseller How to change your mind (2018) raised awareness of substance use in sacred rites and psychotherapy.
The center joins a wave of arts venues that have popped up in New York’s Hudson Valley in recent years, including Foreland Catskill, Magazzino Italian Art Museum in Cold Spring, and Jack Shainman’s The School in Kinderhook.
The centerpiece of Entheon is Alex’s cycle of 21 paintings featuring all the systems of the human body (he previously worked as a medical illustrator).
Allyson’s multimedia installation Chaos, Order, Secret Writing will also be honoured. The work includes her devotional drawings and abstractions pointing to the spectral light which she considers to be the basis of consciousness. Will also be exhibited those of Alex Gaia (1989), a 12-by-8-foot canvas depicting an environmental crisis (and featuring two planes near the twin towers of the World Trade Center).
True enthusiasts of psychedelia, the couple also installed a reliquary containing the glasses of the chemist Albert Hofmann, who developed LSD, and the ashes of Timothy Leary, who popularized the expression “Turn on, tune in, drop out ” in the 1960s.
Entheon will be funded by ticket sales (around $20) and there’s a shop featuring posters, prints and covers featuring the couple’s art. Allyson also offers $350 Zoom consultations for artists. Naming opportunities for galleries are available for $75,000 to $250,000.
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