OPENING FRIDAY APRIL 8

ATERPARTY: Friday, April 8. Line up: The Oscillation (live), Strange Boutique, Rodaidh McDonald, David Maclean.

Starting 23h, location: Stroomhuis. Tickets 3 euro for sale on Thursday and Friday night at MU (from 20h).

The internet is the most influential experience and interface to have emerged over the past decade, having an unprecedented effect on society. The impact on our minds, modes of communication, creativity and even physiology is undeniable. A new wave of artists is emerging that is trying to make sense of our relationship to technology and the internet. The New Psychedelica, curated by Francesca Gavin, is the first exhibition that demonstrates how this work can be seen as a 21st century redefinition of psychedelic art.

Overload

The 15 international artists in this exhibition are bringing mostly new works together. All works depict the experience of an overload of information and an excess of imagery. Here video works, sculptures, photographs and digital collages reference video games and retro rave culture, cheap science and totemic tribalism, trash technology and shamanism. A number of works in the exhibition use found footage and dated digital effects, or methods which tweak and misuse technology to break down its structure. The aim is to create a sense of chaos and collapse, excess and avalanche. Together the pieces demonstrate the vitality of the internet as a focus for contemporary art.

Altered states

This new wave of psychedelica differs from the 1960s focus on perceptual distortion and cultural upheaval. Cosmic cinema, fantastical imagery and dream machines have transformed into YouTube videos, gif culture and sculptural works that play with modern altered states. This is an art practise filled with video clips, dated technology, code and disintegrating images. It veers from the anti-academic to the overtly geeky.

The New Psychedelica brings together sculptural and installation pieces by Harm van den Dorpel (NL), Jim Drain (US), Nik Kosmas and Daniel Keller (Aids-3D) (US), Sergio Recabarren (CL) and Ben Sansbury (UK), alongside video pieces by Antoine Catala (FR), Paul B Davis (US), E*rock (US), Carlos Lazslo (US), Rosa Menkman (NL), Brenna Murphy (US), Jimmy Joe Roche (US), Jeremy Shaw (CA), Yoshi Sodeoka (UK) and Daniel Swan (UK).

Francesca Gavin is a curator, art critic and editor based in London. She is the Visual Arts Editor of Dazed & Confused, the art editor of Twin and a Contributing Editor at AnOther magazine. She is the author of Street Renegades, Hell Bound: New Gothic Art and Creative Space, all published by Laurence King. Her fourth book 100 New Artists will be published in 2011. She writes for publications including Vogue, Art Review, Blueprint, Oyster, TimeOut, wallpaper*, The Guardian online, Contemporary, Elle and 
i-D. Gavin also has curated a number of exhibitions and is the curator of the Soho House collection.