Brion Gysin: Dream Machine

The New Museum presents “Brion Gysin: Dream Machine,” the first US retrospective of the work of the painter, performer, poet, and writer Brion Gysin (born 1916, Taplow, UK–died 1986, Paris). Working simultaneously in a variety of mediums, Gysin was an irrepressible inventor, serial collaborator, and subversive spirit whose considerable innovations continue to influence musicians and writers, as well as visual and new media artists today. The exhibition will include over 300 drawings, books, paintings, photo-collages, films, slide projections, and sound works, as well as an original Dreamachine—a kinetic light sculpture that utilizes the flicker effect to induce visions when experienced with closed eyes. “Brion Gysin: Dream Machine” is curated by Laura Hoptman, Kraus Family Senior Curator, and will be on view in the New Museum’s second floor gallery.

“An exhibition of an artist who died more than twenty years ago represents an approach to the notion of the new that is somewhat different from the Museum’s standard—one that emphasizes relevance and fresh information over chronology, and brings to the fore a relatively neglected yet very influential innovator who continues to have a strong impact on artists working today,” said Laura Hoptman.

In 1959, Gysin created the Cut-Up Method, in which words and phrases were literally cut up into pieces and then rearranged to untether them from their received meanings and reveal new ones. His Cut-Up experiments, which he shared with his lifelong friend and collaborator William S. Burroughs, culminated in Burroughs and Gysin’s The Third Mind, a book-length collage manifesto on the Cut-Up Method and its uses. Transferring this notion to experimenting with tape-recorded poems manipulated by a computer algorithm, Gysin created sound poetry and was among the earliest users of the computer in art. At the same creative moment, Gysin conceived of the Dreamachine. During the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, Gysin would continue his collaborations, and prove to be a mentor for myriad artists, poets, and musicians, from John Giorno to Brian Jones, to David Bowie and Patti Smith, to Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Keith Haring, among many others.

William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin. The Third Mind, 1965. Ink and typescript on paper. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, purchased with funds provided by the Hiro Yamagata Foundation

PERFORMANCE ART

Brion Gysin

Born in Taplow, UK in 1916, Brion Gysin was raised in Edmonton, Alberta, but spent most of his adult life between Tangier, London, New York, and Paris, where he died in 1986. Painter, writer, sound poet, lyricist, and performance artist, Gysin came to prominence in the late 1950s when he lived and worked at the infamous Beat Hotel in Paris. Throughout his life he collaborated with a number of well-known writers, poets, artists, and musicians, though his relationship with the writer William S. Burroughs was most critical to the evolution of his thinking. His work has been included in exhibitions at Galleria Trastevere (Topazia Alliata), Rome; October Gallery, London; Galerie de France, Paris; Museé d”Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; the Institute of Contemporary Art, London; and Guillaume Gallozzi Gallery, New York. A retrospective of his work was held at the Edmonton Art Gallery in 1998. “Brion Gysin: Dream Machine” is the first comprehensive presentation of Gysin’s work in an American museum.

Brion Gysin with Dreamachine at Musée des Art Décoratifs, Paris, 1962. © Harold Chapman/Topham/The Image Works

DREAM MACHINE

Chloérose Performance

Brion Gysin SELF-PORTRAT PERFORMANCE

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