In autumn 2020 and the editions presents, as a guest at Georg Kargl PERMANENT, the LSD portfolio.

Consisting of 20 editions by contemporary artists, it got published between 2013 and 2015 by English curator and gallerist Rob Tufnell.

The works are printed on so called blotter, a perforated absorbant paper, which was used to disitribute the drug LSD after it was prohibited in 1966. Of course in the exhibition the blotter is not soaked with the psychoactive substance, but the artworks remind of the iconography of the historic blotters from the 1960s and 1970s, which have their origins in the counterculture of the Hippies.

The papers were often covered with images of cartoons, literary fgures like Alice in Wonderland or Albert Hofmann, the explorer of LSD. Often simple symbols and abstract forms were printed row after row, in hundredfold repetition on them. The result reminds of Op Art, Minimal Art and sometimes of Concept Art, Pop Art and Surrealism.

The works of the 20 artists take up these references. In a text for Tate Modern, which collection includes the LSD Portfolio, emphasizes Andrew Wilson, curator for modern and contemporary art at Tate Britain, that most of the works are based on repetition and seriality. Art & Language, Laura Owens, Steven Claydon, Jim Drain, Mark Leckey, Chris Martin and Pae White use these concepts, which are also of central signifcance for modernism. In the perforated grid of the absorbant paper, hippie culture and modernism meet each on this formal level.

In contrast, echos of surrealism can be found in Tal R's work and musical references in those by Thomas Bayrle and Rodney Graham. Liam Gillick, David Shrigley and Jeremy Deller work with humorous irony. While the editions of Henning Bohl, Matt Mullican and Carsten Höller are connected to other works by them, Aleksandra Mir and Mungo Thomson take up popular motifs of the Hippies and Richard Wright and Philipp Taaffe their psychadelic aesthetics.

The images of historical LSD blotters ultimately became part of the branding for this counterculture, which is now considered dissolved, but whose ideas – such as equality, environmental protection and network culture – nowadays are in the middle of society. The portfolio of the contemporary artists pays tribute to this design, which interwines art and life and stands for a longing for alternative ways to the establishment.

The LSD portfolio was first exhibited in 2014 at White Culumns in New York and afterwards presented in 2016, supplemented by some new works, at Rob Tufnell Gallery in London.