Deitch Projects is pleased to present Black Acid Co-op, the third collaborative project of Justin Lowe and Jonah Freeman. Their first installation Hello Meth Lab In The Sun (with Alexandre Singh), commissioned by Ballroom Marfa, consisted of a labyrinthine assemblage of rooms, hallways, closets and observation platforms. A variation entitled Hello Meth Lab With A View then traveled to The Station in Miami, FL, curated by Shamim Momin and Nate Lowman and produced by Eleanor Cayre, where it was installed in a duplex apartment. Their new piece continues the themes of previous versions specifically that of alchemy in a modern context and community, ritual and psychosis.
Black Acid Co-Op is the moniker for a counter-culture enclave embedded in the metropolis. In this incarnation, the artists shift the focus from the production of illegal drugs to sites of sub-cultural groups and how they are situated in the larger urban environment. The installation will expand on the notions relating to the connection between counter-culture and industrial society resulting in a spatial collage that extends itself into a vast architectural setting.
Despite the strong contrast of scenes, the entire installation will feel as if it is a unified system of spaces, interconnected and functioning together. Ducts, wires and tubes traverse rooms creating a semblance of an organism: architecture as body, electricity as capillaries, and volumes as organs. And the intended use of many of the sites will feel transformed or hybridized: factories have become homes, kitchens are used as drug labs, the radical chic living room is frozen in a museum, the high-rise is carved into makeshift maze to evade the law.
