A PAUL AMLEHN PRIMER

In a small departure from my normal protocol here, I'm beginning today's round of posts with an endorsement and a tease, rather than an overt share. Why? Because the exponentially exploding rate at which unlikely paths cross in the internet's global mesh has meant that any number of fascinating and unlikely people from every form of the arts have, at one time or another chimed in to express appreciation for our activities here, but only occasionally do I get floored by the gravitas of that someone. Paul Amlehn is one of those someones, and I think you all deserve to be hepped to the exploits of fascinating and unique character.

Though the situation is increasingly improving, the somewhat ghetto-ized nature of the contemporary art world vis a vis underground music and hipster culture has meant that it's often easy for someone to have enormous currency and stature inside the fine arts/visual arts continuum and be comparatively invisible to subcultural operators and fans outside the highbrow fold, and such it seems is the case with several of the many remarkable achievements of New Zealand's polymath artist extraordinaire Paul Amlehn. With work of his in the collections of MOMA, the Documenta archives and appearances at various blue chip world art fairs like the Venice Biennale, Amlehn has long been an acknowledged and auspicious presence on the global gallery and museum circuit. but if the name of this visual artist/installation artist/performance artist/video artist/filmmaker/poet/playwright/professional niche-escaper is perhaps ringing a bell for some of you more music obsessed types, it may well be due to word of Amlehn's numerous and contemporaneous works currently in progress in collaboration with King Crimson guitar god Robert Fripp, among them a truly auspicious sounding project titled "Saudade" involving Amlehn's texts set to music performed by Fripp, the Kronos Quartet's Joan Jeanrenaud, Dirty Three/P.J. Harvey drummer Jim White and pianist Mike Garson, whose fabulous and spiky Tippett-like runs graced several period Bowie songs, most memorably Aladdin Sane.

Contemporaneously, Amlehn and Fripp are currently beavering away at no less than three other projects including two distinct song cycles (The Nagual Song Cycle and Melponeme, respectively) and another large-scale collaborative project with a roster
every bit as auspicious as Saudade’s (though unannounced for the time being, as it’s
still being formalized).

All these projects follow on the heels of Amlehn and Fripp's initial work together on the "The Seven Words" project, a venture whose nature both underscores one of the subcurrents that limn Amlehn's activities (micro-scale versus macro-scale, internal and external states and the slippery elision between them) and one that expresses the ambition and scale of his plots, processes and visions. The Seven Words exists in three dimensions, the first a private, individual "concert" heard one person at a time inside a John Lilly-style isolation tank, the second a transmission of this music projected into the cosmos by the folks that NASA employs to beam signals of intelligent life out into the universe, the third a signed edition-of-one CD of this material auctioned off for charity. One minute sound samples of this can be found Here




The alchemical is a consistent signifier in Amlehn's aesthetic praxis and it's manifestations have taken numerous forms. His recent "photo-paintings", which coax decadently gorgeous and formally flawless images from processes involving photographic materials, chemicals and applications of heat, radiation and magnetism manifests one dimension of this thrust, producing images of inchoate forms and biomorphic transmutations that feel imbued with an innate sense of organic order that seems arrived at from natural processes rather than willed act and thats is possessed of a numinous internal radiance that feels slightly otherworldly. Examples of these can be found Here






Workings across multiple forms of media allows Amlhen to tease out a panoply of refracting facets of his impulse toward transmutation, and if his photographic manipulations delineate a verdant and buttery rich world of protoplasmic metamorphosis, his texts offer a window into a vision of transmogrification aswim in the ichor of spiritual catharsis, a purgative and intensely personal exploration whose inner dimensions are detailed at length by Amlehn on a post on his blog titled "Trauma As Prima Materia", which can be found Here

Works spanning the gap between performance art and experimental theater that he undertook following a move to New York in the late 90's garnered Amlehn praise from no less than the likes of Robert Wilson, Ron Athey and Leonard Cohen and would lead to his expanding the scope of his celebrated theatrical work Jean Tripier Jean d'Arc into a sexually explicit feature length film titled The Tears Of Eros, to be shot by the eminent French cinematographer Benoit Debie, who lensed Gaspar Noe's Irreversible and to be scored by King Crimson.

All of the above, while offering several vantage points on his work, merely glances off the surface of a well that runs very deep and whose impact is collectively acute. It's work that, in a time of ADD-addled sensibilities, asks to be consciously mulled over, teased apart and slowly rolled over the tongue. And it's work the rewards every minute of the effort.