El Museo del Barrio has announced the first U.S. museum survey of Chilean-born artist, filmmaker, and mystic Alejandro Jodorowsky. Untitled ‘Jodorowsky’ and guest curated by María Inés Rodríguez, the exhibition will take place February 28 - May 12 in New York City and will also feature the premiere of his most recent film Psychomagic: A Healing Art (2018) in El Museo’s newly restored El Teatro.
The exhibition will feature more than five decades of his artistic production and will include an array of visual, literary, archival, and filmic material drawn largely from the artist’s personal archives. Among the works on display are ephemera related to Jodorowsky’s early theatrical and pantomime performances which he developed in post-WWII Paris as a co-creator of the Panic movement; a selection of his long-running cartoon strip, Las Fábulas Pánicas, published while Jodorowsky was living in Mexico City as an integral participant in the avant-garde art scene; and material related to his pioneering role as the director of both recent films including Endless Poetry (2016) as well as cult film classics as El Topo (1970), The Holy Mountain (1973) and his abandoned film adaption of Frank Herbert’s science fiction classic, Dune.
Also on view will be works on paper by PascALEjandro, the synthesized being comprised of Jodorowsky and his partner Pascale Montandon-Jodorowsky, whose creative production has been described as the “love child” of the two artists. At its core, this extensive body of work (which today extends to the artist’s lively Twitter-stream) is united by Jodorowsky’s profound dedication to exploring the therapeutic possibilities of art, as revealed by his fascination and dedication to studying and restoring the Tarot of Marseille.
The exhibition will be accompanied by diverse programming, including a Tarot-reading by Jodorowsky. A line-up of film screenings including such cult classics as Fando y Lis (1968), El Topo (1970), and The Holy Mountain (1973).
Jodorowsky, born in Tocopilla, Chile in 1929 is a Chilean-French internationally acclaimed director, playwright, composer, actor, and poet. Best known for directing celebrated avant-garde films such as El Topo (1970), The Holy Mountain (1973), Santa Sangre (1989), and The Dance of Reality (2013), among many others, Jodorowsky has developed a prolific and diverse body of work that extends from miming to graphic novels, from Tarot-reading to literature and poetry, from esoteric writing to his relations with the Surrealist circles in Paris, and from underground cinema to his first performances with the Panic Group in the 1960s. His anti-conformist work has reached a large audience and triggered a true cult following through the symbolic, philosophical and sometimes esoteric dimensions of his art. Such rich output has influenced generations of actors, writers, filmmakers and visual artists across the globe.
