​

BOUND & INFINITY 
2nd annual
PRS Salon group exhibition
on view September 21- October 19


Within the divine sphere of time existences live and move and have their being. 
From this inscrutable Wholeness there issues forth two agents designated 
Ether and Chaos, 
or 
the BOUND & the INFINITY. 
                                                                                   
                                                             - Manly Palmer Hall


If art is alchemy, then the artist is simply working with what they already have. What’s more, whether cognizant of it or not, they operate upon the principle that all things contain some part of everything else. In the spirit of the Philosophical Society’s mission and dedication to the “ensoulment of all arts, sciences, and crafts”, the relationship of art and alchemy is celebrated with the works of 26 individual artists— the volunteers, workers, and contributors that fundamentally shape the atmosphere of PRS. 

The works of  BOUND & INFINITY are born of impossibility and contradiction. They exist as both ether and chaos: “limited as to place, condition, and duration” and  “unlimited, unorganized, and without sense of Time.” What is it to be of this earth & completely alien; to be fully formed & utterly formless; to be that third unknown born when two knowns meet?  When these two opposites acting each upon the other, destroy the placidity of the eternal state, then what is left?

For the two to become the one--

For the Orphic Egg to form--

The Philosophical Research Society is thrilled to invite you to our second PRS Salon exhibiting works by PRS staff, contributors and volunteers! This group exhibition will be on display from September 21st to October 19th in the Hansell Gallery.curated by: Kelly Carmena, Amanda Brass, dama, Michael Dorsey, and Liz Vazquez

Featuring works by: Amanda Brass, Amy Zimmitti, Anna Wickenden, Anthony Cozzi, Astara Calas, dama, David Orr, Devon Deimler , Dillan Conniff, Emilía Turner, Jarrett Schaefer, josie j, Justin Taylor, Kai Sugiyama, Kimmy Velez, Kristal Gittens, Kristen Phillips, Liz Vazquez, Malado Francine, Masha Lyass, Matt Schnittker, Robin Blanchard, Sara Alessandrini, Stephen Reedy, Taylor Johnson & theatre dybbuk. 

ARTISTS BIOS:
 
Anna Wickenden (Gogh Gogh) is a musician and multidisciplinary artist with a classical background in art, music and dance. She is currently working on a debut album for her musical project Gogh Gogh which will include a live show featuring movement and visual art.
 
Amanda Brass (b. 1975) "The DNA of Stardust" is made with children's art supplies on office supply paper. This expression supports the ongoing theme of giving your inner child permission to feel like a real artist (despite having a day job). Amanda is grateful to be given another opportunity to communicate creatively alongside PRS staff and volunteers.
 
Amy Zimmitti is an artist and sound engineer living and working in Los Angeles. In 2008, Amy relocated from the East Coast to become a course director for The Los Angeles Film School. She develops instructional content for several degree programs and mentors students in the sound production of their filmmaking, animation, and game development projects.
 
Anthony Cozzi is a woodworker, musician, and artist based in Los Angeles. His work is influenced by occult symbolism as well as the practice of Ceremonial Magic and Hermetic Qabalah. He is currently pursuing a masters degree in Clinical Psychology. Anthony began working with paper collage in 2022. This untitled collage was used as cover art for an album of his, ‘Psychic Self Defense’, in 2023.
 
Astara Calas is a musician and consciousness explorer living in Los Angeles Of Greek and SWANA heritage, her first loves were music and dance. She spent many years performing in both the US and Europe. From a young age, Calas channeled sounds and visions, a type of synesthesia from the etheric realm and today she records these impulses in her music. Calas took classes in Transcendental Meditation and past life regression when she was a teenager. She then went on to major in eastern philosophy and Jungian psychology at the University of Colorado before moving to Prague where she lived as a working musician singing and playing guitar in her space rock band. The band eventually signed to Columbia Records and relocated to Los Angeles. After Finding her way out of the vortex of rock and roll, Astara discovered Jonathan Goldman, a pioneer in the field of sound healing and became certified as a sound healer. In those years of deep sonic exploration she learned how to tap into her consciousness and record the sounds she heard from other planes. Through the practice of kundalini yoga, she was lead to the philosophy of Sufi music mystic Hazrat Inayat Khan. She purchased a set of tabla and took up studies in the architecture of Indian classical raga cycles with teacher Pandit Shashanka Bakshi. Calas eventually switched the tabla for synthesizer and formed Indian classical/ experimental musical group Liberate Elemental Forces with other students of Shashanka Outside of music she is also one of the founders of the iconic restaurant Elf in Echo Park. She is certified in several healing modalities and has been practicing the Dolores Cannon method of hypnosis (QHHT) since 2012.
 
dama (aka Amanda Maciel Antunes) is a Brazilian artist based in Los Angeles. Her auto-didactic and transdisciplinary practice merges language and durational performance to create paintings, photography, writing, sculpture, sound, film and assemblage. She works in collaboration with public libraries, nature and communal spaces, reflecting on the selective nature of memory, inherent language and anthropological references written by women as points of departure. For reasons of political, historical and cultural urgency, her artistic journey aims to learn from the side of language that requires getting in touch with the unfamiliarity of times past to bring up the inner depths of the present. She has exhibited nationally and internationally. Her first book titled Second Birth was published in the Spring of 2023 by HEXENTEXTE. She’s also a librarian at the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles where she also curates and hosts a monthly Surrealist Study Group focusing on women authors and artists, creating community engagement, social practice and arts programming.
 
David Orr is a visual artist based in California. His work has been shown extensively in the United States and internationally in shows juried by representatives from the de Young Museum, the International Center for Photography, the Lucie Awards, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, The New York Times, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others. His work is in public collections among such artists as Ansel Adams, John Baldessari, Jim Dine, David Hockney, The Brothers Quay, Edward Weston, and Joel-Peter Witkin. His work has appeared in Art Daily, Buzzfeed, Communication Arts, Graphis, Harper’s, Hyperallergic, The Photo Review, Print, The Art Director’s Club, LA Weekly, The Society of Publication Designers, Psychological Perspectives, The Theosophist, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, VICE, and VICTOR: The Hasselblad Magazine. Independent film projects have aired on Channel 4 Britain and PBS. He speaks about his work regularly, and has presented at The Joseph Campbell Foundation, Death Salon, The Director’s Guild of America, Dublintellectual, The Mütter Museum, The New School, Parsons School of Design, The Philosophical Research Society (where he established the contemporary arts program, served as curator, and founded the Hansell Gallery), Reed College, Tibet House US, and UCLA, among other venues. Recent projects include collaborations with composer Concetta Abbate; Pulitzer-prizewinning poet Jorie Graham; musicians John Cale, Nick Cave, and Warren Ellis. David is a member of The Long Now Foundation.
 
Devon Deimler is a writer, artist, and researcher. She earned her PhD in Mythological Studies with an emphasis in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute with a dissertation on Dionysian aesthetics. She holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her experience in the arts includes founding an independent record label, Wildfire Wildfire Productions, and working as Assistant to the Director at the Dennis Hopper Art Trust. She is Associate Core Faculty in Pacifica Graduate Institute’s Mythological Studies and Depth Psychology and Creativity programs; Curator at OPUS Archives and Research Center; and former Scholar-in-Residence and a Contributing Artist at the Philosophical Research Society.
 
Dillan Conniff iis a Los Angeles-based artist and musician whose work has varied throughout his life, exploring illustration, multimedia work, painting both abstract and crude realism, and making music. His work aims to encourage a more inclusive and compassionate society.
 
Emilía Turner is a multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles, California. Working in a variety of media (alternative process photography, mixed media sculpture, experimental music, and performance), they explore subjects that are ephemeral and dichotomous -- growth and decay, humans’ complicated relationship with the planet, and paradoxes found in nature. They have exhibited both visual and performance-based work in New York City, Los Angeles, Rome, and Iceland, and participated in residency programs in Joshua Tree, North Carolina, Seyðisfjörður, and more. They have composed and performed across the USA in various experimental music projects (Paradot, Sloppy Jane, Kisskadee), and own the audio production business Studio Liminals.
 
Jarrett Schaefer is an award-winning feature-length filmmaker currently in hiding in Eastside Los Angeles. He enjoys British spellings, imagining that he is the mothers of all his fellow travellers, and remembering that time he saw an owl at yoga. He is having a pleasant ascension.
 
divinebrick (josie j) is a self iconoclast search for the sacred primordial being.  divinebrick name is a placeholder for an idea that the self is a divine phenomenon holding and caretaking the grander whole. Decolonizing the self is the remembering of the soil the self is made of. The name “josie j” is the further erasure of the colonized self accepted for autonomy.  IG: @divinebrickartist Rumori (Jason Adams) - Jason Adams is a composer, sound engineer, and musician based in Los Angeles. He performs solo as Rumori, and he is a member of the ensemble Danketsu 10 and the electronic duo Choyas. Jason also founded the experimental music concert series Late Breakfast. IG: @soundsbyjason Chris SooHoo - Chris SooHoo is an artist working in paint, film, and virtual reality.  Chris also teaches drawing and painting at the Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art and Loyola Marymount University.  Recently he has been combining his passion for teaching with the collaborative multimedia potential of performance, music, painting, and live streaming.  One way in which this exploration has manifested is in the form of immersive drawing workshops, wherein the atmosphere and narrative generated by the model and accompanying musicians form a newly engaging experience for students and workshop drawers. 
 
Justin "Jutty" Taylor, is Jamaican-Kiwi dance-pop sensation/one hit wonder, (Jutty Ranx, 2013), and a raised-eyebrow winning Hermetic Qabalist. He is the frontman for shoegaze boy-toys Drag Talk, and anonymous sideman for a popular occult rock band.
 
Kai Sugiyama is a painter / sculptor (b, 1992) in Tokyo based in LA.
 
Kimmy Velez is a Colombian creative and eternal seeker of all things dwelling in the seen and unseen realms. Their background in photography and multimedia art come together here in an attempt to unravel the mysteries of their existence through the languages of abstractionism and symmetry. They tend to welcome the unknown with open arms, drawing them to coalesce nature and its beauty with intricate digital manipulation in a pursuit to unearth the almost hidden dimensions of thought-provoking imagery. Kimmy invites viewers to always question the doors of perception, embrace the enigmatic offerings passed on to us while roaming this planet, and to never forget to light a candle if things get a little too dark.
 
Kristal Gittens is a Los Angeles-based visual artist whose work merges the organic with the digital. Through photography, digital design, and experimentation with fabric art and watercolor, she creates naturalistic pieces that celebrate the beauty and resilience of native and tropical plants. With a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a background in digital colorization and design, Gittens’ art seamlessly blends traditional techniques with contemporary technology, inviting viewers to explore the intricate and ephemeral qualities of nature.
 
Kristen Phillips is a Los Angeles based sculptor, designer, fabricator, and writer. Since 2004, she has created masks, props, sculptures, and costume pieces for film, TV, theater, live events, the haunted attraction industry, and private collectors. Her work has been shown at LACMA, Copro Gallery, Lethal Amounts Gallery, The Hive Gallery, and The Hansell Gallery at PRS. Her current ongoing projects include The Membrane, an illustrated novel published serially on Patreon and Substack, and Liminal Credential(s), a video essay series available on YouTube.
 
E.T. (Liz) Vazquez is an artist, writer, and filmmaker from Los Angeles. After studying cultural anthropology and philosophy at Moorpark College, they received their BA in Film Production with a focus on cinematography at the Arts University Bournemouth in the UK. From 2021 to 2022, they were an artist-in-residence at The Philosophical Research Society. In 2022, they graduated from the American Film Institute Conservatory with an MFA in Screenwriting. Liz's work incorporates experimental video art, painting, drawing, assemblage, photography, and narrative filmmaking.
 
Malado Francine (b.Malado Francine Baldwin-Tejeda) is a multi-media artist based in Los Angeles. Her early film work is a part of Miranda July's Joanie4Jackie feminist film archive at Bard College and the Getty Research Institute. Her sculptures are in the Ruth Bader Ginsburg collection and at the Philosophical Research Society, Los Angeles. She is a 2022 Pollock Krasner Award recipient for painting, and a Mercedes Matter Award recipient for panting in 2023. In a recent event on January 31st 2024, she lost many of her paintings and sculptures in a home and studio fire. The work you see here was rescued and restored, and is being shown for the first time.
 
masha lyass is a multidisciplinary artist and production designer based in Los Angeles. works featured by galleries and spaces like Art Innovation Gallery, Blackdove, Frogtown Creative, TheBlanc Art Space; publications - Currant Jam; installation art for Navier, Art Basel Miami 2022; Smartwater, Art Basel Miami 2023.
 
Matt Schnittker is an Animation Technologist, Magic Lanternist, and Tintype Photographer. He has spent the last 25 years in the entertainment industry where he's been involved in many well known animated films. He has contributed to multiple technology patents and is a member of the Visual Effects Society, ASIFA, and the Magic Lantern Society of the US and Canada. His background in animation software and process combined with an interest in 1800's photography inspired a journey to re-create the animated Magic Lantern performances of the 19th century.

Robin Blanchard is raised by wolves in Los Angeles, CA.

Sara Alessandrini is a filmmaker who likes to spend too much time, mostly in her head, in New York. She is the producer and director of the mini-series "This is What New Yorkers Say", due for release in 2025, chronicling the opinions of New Yorkers about politics, news media, women empowerment, and especially, the resignation of the NY Governor Andrew Cuomo.
 
Stephen Reedy is a filmmaker, teacher and PRS Contributing Scholar who studied Metal Sculpture with the Bay Area sculpture troup “The Iron Kids.”
 
Taylor Cyan Johnson lives and works in Los Angeles. Her works explore intimacy and a dreamlike inner world in psychologically expressive, symbolic, mythologically-referenced paintings and whimsical line drawings. Her work meditates on fragmentation, devotion, and feelings of suspension while playing with climactic movement and purposeful gazes. Employing subtle value shifts, light colour washes, and raw linework, she projects a delicate, sacred, uninhibited tenderness and sensuality with an intuitive hand.
 
theatre dybbuk was founded in 2011, with its inaugural production, cave…a dance for lilith (co-produced with LA Contemporary Dance Company), opening on November 9, 2012 at the Diavolo Dance Space in The Brewery Art Colony. Since that time, the company has created a variety of multidisciplinary theatrical works that use Jewish history as an entry point to explore contemporary concerns. Employing an in-depth development process that can range from a few months to three years, Artistic Director Aaron Henne writes and directs each project, building them in collaboration with professional actors, designers, musicians, and scholars. The resulting works, from the poetic and stirring exagoge to the historically rigorous and theatrically absurd The Merchant of Venice (Annotated), or In Sooth I Know Not Why I Am So Sad, are challenging and beautiful to behold.

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