Uwishunu.com

In 1963, Ira Cohen filmed “The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda,” a forty minute psychedelic bacchanal built around an elaborate set framed by billowing mylar walls. His work was reissued by Arthur Magazine last year and Cohen himself has been back out on the road to support it.

Cerealarts is hosting five prints from Cohen’s “From the Mylar Chamber” – 20″x30″ transparencies suspended and backlit in lightboxes. These swirling works are dizzyingly colorful and as detailed and simultaneously incomprehensible as your weirdest dreams.

Also showing are twenty-two of Cohen’s pigment prints of photos from the every-twelve-years Kumbh Mela pilgrimage in India.

These photographs are as bold and provocative as his works in the mylar chamber, and even as documentary, are as otherworldly and rich as the invented latitudes of Thunderbolt Pagoda.

Small pics of Ira’s photo work are on the Cerealart website. This show gets my highest First Friday recommendation.

CerealArt
307 N 3rd St, Philadelphia, PA 19106
(215) 627-5060