Welcome to the Gallery for Psychedelic Visualisation!
(Psychedelic is used here in the sense of altered, broadened awareness.)
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The photo designer Volker Schrader
will lead you through a process
of modified perceptions
in his gallery.
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Every picture is language
The power of the media world seeks to suggest that the flood of images it subjects us to every day are pictures of reality.
But what is reality? Should we really believe what we see? And what is truth?
Reality reaches our perception in the form of electromagnetic waves; as humans, we then produce the images ourselves within the scope of our physiological capabilities, and also with our aids for extending perception, e.g. the camera. But nothing that a medium shows, and even less what we, as the public, actually see, is a true depiction of reality but only a subjective expression or interpretation by an author, editor, journalist, film director, cameraman etc. Every picture is language, aesthetic expression or art.
Giving perception a jolt
Consequently, this Gallery has no wish to offer what is alleged to be a view of the world. You will not find any sensations, intimacies or perversities. What the exhibition wants is for you, as the viewer, to make your perception a sensation. Volker Schraders aim is to give you an impulse to perceive and interpret the human world in a different way. Looking at things from various different viewpoints may perhaps bring us a little closer to the truth. And if nothing else, then at least the truth that human perception is subjective, i.e. of human and not global or universal dimensions. So let us play with our perception in order to come a little closer to our human reality!
The intention of the psychedelic pictures of Volker Shrader is to give our stereotyped, routine perception a jolt.
Positive existentialism
The world is what it is - neither sensationally good nor sensationally bad. What do we find sensational today about wars, accidents, disasters and celebrities? And one of the things that are most decidedly not sensational are the solutions offered en masse in the media through the huge numbers of alleged experts and specialists, i.e. public figures. What the artist does find sensational, on the other hand, is the fact that we are free to decide for ourselves whether we see a glass of water as half full or half empty, without the objective reality itself changing in any way.
In this sense, the pictures transmit the idea of positive existentialism. What we need to do is to found a network for altered and diverse perception, instead of naively and extravagantly forever seeking to change the network of nature or global events! So let us change the human network!
Just as the individual pictures have been created in a lengthy process of change, so the nature of the exhibition is designed as a process of perception. The photographs on which the pictures presented in the exhibition are based have in some cases a thirty-year process of development behind them. In most cases, they have undergone six-fold covering, i.e. repeated modification, so are the result of almost countless transformations.
Music
Volker Schrader is not a photo designer but a musician, too. Along with Antje Kruse and Uwe Müchler he also founded the group Desire.
The pictures shows are combined with self-composed music. Desire deals with different musical styles, through all styles Desire developed it`s own sound running from swing and jazz to blues ,rock, funk, Latin, reggae and soul.
Desire combines its music with poems and texts by Volker Schrader, Antje Kruse, Uwe Müchler, Dr. Michaele Hetzel, Monja Bach Fischer, Ilona Eberding and Hans Stampfer.
Roughly the songs can be divided into five categories: life experiences and relationship events, philosophical and social policies, social criticism and chansons.
The music can be directly found with the link to the homepage www.desire-music.com Some songs on this page were visualized with .
Thus, an overall total artistic concept is generated.
Acknowledgements
Without the active support of friend and photographic engineer Dirk Brandl, the existing volume of work - created over 35 years - could never have come about. His assistance took the form of active collaboration, and therefore many of the pictures are also signed with his name. I also owe my thanks for their active support to Dr. Michaele Hetzel, Petra Langenbrinck, Rita Birkner and Ulrich Bunzek.
In order to retain your altered perceptions, make use of them in everyday life and also be reminded of the psychedelic jolt, the pictures are also available for purchase. They are sold not as works of art but as aesthetic works; but like all works of art, they will add to every ambience and also satisfy the artistic sense of the beholder.
Volker Schrader
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