“That is a part of human nature, the need to alter consciousness.” When Michael Pollan so lucidly spoke of the expertise of psychedelics just a few years again in his analysis into the therapeutic and psychologically therapeutic qualities of mind-enhancing medication, we instantly considered the Furtherrr Collective of painters that features Mars-1, Damon Soule, David Choong Lee, and Nome Edonna. And naturally, Oliver Vernon. Particularly, his work is an immersively transcendent, densely packed psychedelia that appears as if the Hubble Telescope has wired itself into Vernon’s mind so he may paint the furthest galaxies possible.

For Counterpoint, on view at The Chambers Mission in Grass Valley, California this spring, Vernon has created a brand new collection of work, drawings, and sculptural works, the place the Chambers Mission explains how “shade, type, power, structure, good, evil, flesh and machine are lurking (in every work), by no means as bodily entities, however as transient archetypes looking for their ultimate locations throughout the framework of the cosmos.” The cosmos is the place we begin and the place we finish with Vernon. The place Pollan talks in regards to the need to alter our potential to see what is just in entrance of us, Vernon paints that impulse to see much more. The cosmos could also be tens of millions of miles away however they’re additionally deeply entrenched within the unconscious of our minds. And Counterpoint is our visualization of that truth. —Evan Pricco

The present opens Saturday, Feb 18 and tickets may be bought right here upfront.