Your mother made a good point. "Semioptics" would have avoided the triple reading. Regarding "post-hypnotic," here's the first para of my catalog essay:
As a title for a show of latter-day optical art, "post-hypnotic" hits the bullseye on several counts, Obviously it's a sly double-entendre, referencing the subliminal messages long suspected to lurk within psychedelic-type art, while at the same time mocking the art world's mania for art historical labels. The pun, in turn, puts ironic quotation marks around the exhibit, allowing the artists to participate in a "movement" and at the same time distance themselves from those much-maligned (oversimplified, hegemonic, market-driven) groupings.
"p-h" was organized by Barry Blinderman, who ran another East Village gallery in the '80s, Semaphore, before moving to Illinois to run the gallery program at Illinois State U. He's much more loyal to the '80s version of "op" (Taaffe, Halley, Bleckner) than I am. The "op show" I organized in 1998 actually pitted artists working on a shoestring in the '90s against the legacy of slick '80s producers. I would have preferred to have the "post-hypnotic" timeline start in 1992 rather than 1982, but I welcomed the opportunity to show how well my giant xerox paper collage held up against the buff '80s confections. It's a damn shame the show didn't come to NY, but what can you do.
- tom moody 6-03-2002 10:35 pm





add a comment to this page:

Your post will be captioned "posted by anonymous,"
or you may enter a guest username below:


Line breaks work. HTML tags will be stripped.