PROCESS

“how is color connected to feeling? how do scientists studying the mind decipher the codes of thought and emotion in neuro scans? What is the color and pattern of hope, what does the brain look like under the influence of drugs? And why does the human animal constantly desire to manipulate the activity inside the brain, even when it can be deadly or dangerous to do so?”

- James verbicky on the Brainscan series, 2020.

The practice of altering consciousness stretches back before recorded time. One could even posit that human beings began to alter their brain chemistry with natural substances and depict themselves and their surroundings in art simultaneously. And so, the birth of the portrait and awareness of ‘self’ are tied inexorably together from the earliest days of our species. And though the portrait has seen many incarnations and countless interpretations over millenia, one thing has held true: the exterior of the human form has been its near constant foundation.

Verbicky takes this immutable legacy and turns it inside out. Technology has given us inconceivable glimpses into the human brain in the search for solutions to pathology, but as a side effect, we have been offered a near miraculous invitation to observe the heretofore concealed movements of chemical interactions, of emotion, thought, dreams, even death. But most deeply, Verbicky shows us how art can walk beside science and together, unimaginable discoveries can be made about the nature of existence itself.