Suzanne Treister
work from Alchemy and Hexen 2039__________8 November – 19 December 2008
installation view
Suzanne Treister · Work from Alchemy and Hexen 2039
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copyright all images: Suzanne Treister , Galerie Lorenz and Annelly Juda Fine Arts, London

Galerie Lorenz is pleased to exhibit work by London based artist Suzanne Treister.

Alchemy is series of works which transcribe front pages of international daily newspapers into alchemical drawings, reframing the world as a place animated by strange forces, powers and belief systems. These works redeploy the languages and intentions of alchemy: the transmutation of materials and essences and the revealed understanding of the world as a text, as a realm of powers and correspondences which, if properly understood, will allow man to take on transformative power.

In 1995 Suzanne Treister created the fictional alter ego Rosalind Brodsky, a delusional time traveller who believes herself to be working at the Institute of Militronics and Advanced Time Interventionality (IMATI) in the twenty-first century. IMATI is an independent research institute with government and corporate clients, based in South London. Consisting of drawings, interventions, a film, a website, a book and an event, HEXEN 2039 charts Brodsky's para-scientific research towards the development of new mind control technologies for the British Military. The information in HEXEN 2039 is based primarily on actual events, scientific research and military histories.
HEXEN 2039 reveals links between conspiracy theories, occult groups, Chernobyl, witchcraft, the US film industry, British Intelligence agencies, Soviet brainwashing, behaviour control experiments of the US Army and recent practices of its Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command (PSYOP), in light of alarming new research in contemporary neuroscience.
The results of HEXEN 2039 were utilised between 2040 and 2045 in the development of a range of non-lethal weapons for remote alteration of belief patterns in the subject.
A series of diagrams showing key links between individuals, locations, events and histories in HEXEN 2039. The diagrams take the form of alchemical drawings to draw out deeper levels of correspondence and to show transformative relationships. Together they form a picture of the body of research leading to the development of new technologies of mind control.

Suzanne Treister (b.1958 London UK) studied at St Martin’s School of Art, London (1978-1981) and Chelsea College of Art and Design, London (1981-1982), is now  based in London having lived in Australia, New York and Berlin. Primarily a painter through the 1980s, Treister was a pioneer in the digital/new media/web based field from the beginning of the 1990s, developing fictional worlds and international collaborative organisations. Treister’s practice deals with notions of identity, history, power and the hallucinatory. Her investigations into the life and research of the fictional character Rosalind Brodsky, most recently explored in HEXEN 2039, were described by Art in America as ‘One of the most sustained fantasy trips of contemporary art’, which belies a deeper mission: to explore how we make sense of history and the politics of war.

Suzanne Treister has exhibited widely. Recent exhibitions include: Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany; Annely Juda Fine Art, London; P.P.O.W, New York, USA; Kunstverein Langenhagen, Germany; Skolska 28, Prague; Galerie Lorenz, Frankfurt, Germany; Alma Enterprises, London; Hartware MedienKunstVerein (HMKV), Dortmund, Germany; The Jewish Museum, New York, USA; Le Plateau Art Center, FRAC Paris, Ile de France; Museum of Contemporary Art Bordeaux (CAPC), France; Temporary Kunsthalle, Berlin, Germany; Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland; Center for Contemporary Art, Torun, Poland

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