The Irresistible Flow of Time – Galerie 10

A New Wave of Visionary Art

De Es Schwertberger, August 25, 2010

New Wave Origins

Exhibiting Artists

It is already half a century ago that Galerie 10 began to represent the art of the Viennese School of Fantastic Realism, including also its extensions into the following “new waves”.

In 2008 there was an exhibition of this movement in the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, which focused extensively on its historical background, but forgot to give credit to the immense worldwide inspirational impact it had, and still has on the following generations. Fantastic Realism is not dead yet, rather it has taken on a new layer of actuality in the name of International Visionary Art.

The current exhibition of 11 artists, who consider themselves to be part of the worldwide movement of a new wave of Visionary Art, proves that the flow of visionary energy through the Viennese Masters Minds, continues to express itself on a global scale with overwhelming vitality.

The show allows only a tiny glimpse into the gigantic unfolding vistas of the visionary art phenomenon. It unites works of a circle of friends of Amanda Sage and Leo Plaw, who are both travellers between the various wells of visionary art, that spring up all over the planet. The message is clear: The irresistible flow of time is drenched in the vital colours of visionary art.

What is “the New” of “the New Wave” ?

The stream of images which gives mankind its collective inner face is swelling with the waters of an ever growing number of new rivers. The young visionaries drink inspiration from an increasing number of sources.

The new wave derives impulses from the old wave, the influence of the Great Masters cannot be overlooked, we find their marks on all continents. In addition, the art of the masters of the masters, the whole lineage of the visionary style is easily accessible through the internet.

The Freudian-Einsteinian world view, with its clear contour at the time of the early Fantastic Realists, 50 years ago, has been transformed into today’s multidimensional genetically manipulated digital phantom image. The staggering progress of scientific and technological evolution has added exiting new content to the visionary program.

Computer and internet became indispensable tools for the production , communication, exposure and distribution of visionary art, in conjunction with an ever expanding multimedia circuit. The boundaries between classical artistic disciplines are dissolving.

New spiritual movements, meditational methods for self-exploration and self-transformation, with or without chemical aids, progressively overwrite the background vibrations of the orthodox mystical traditions. Cosmic consciousness, planetary integral awareness, eco-politcs, visionary culture.

Not long ago the Fantastic-realistic vision was clearly opposed to the modern looseness of abstract painting. Now there is a shift from its bipolar orientation to the “trinity of realism, fantasy and abstract form”. The new wave of visionary art is dreaming a unified field of artistic expression.

We are invited to flow and dance with the new wave.