Justin Gabriel McInteer, an art/music ninja born in Wichita, Kansas, has moved from city to city and country to country like a true art-samurai, but has finally settled in Los Angeles to found his Silverlake-based gallery Echo Curio and create a mind bending body of artwork.
The root of Justin’s artwork lies in Psychedelic Ecology, a systems theory mixing concepts of permaculture with mythological flights of fancy. Everyday magic within the natural world is interpreted in colorful collages and installations emphasizing a reverence toward a balanced system. Like a synergistic ecosystem, the varying components of the artwork, although interesting in their own right, work best in unison with each other to form the larger installation.
Nathan Cartwright: I had a vision the first time I saw one of your huge 3-D Yantras. How were you first introduced to visionary art?
Justin Gabriel McInteer: I think the first visionary art most of us experience is self-induced by placing pressure on the retina to activate color fields of phosphenes. Those early hallucinogenic experiences turned me on to visionary art and surrealism. I remember being like 8 or 9 sitting in the library looking at books on Dali and Miro. Eventually I studied Hindu temples in art school and was hooked. Years later I spent some time in Southeast Asia photographing Buddhist temples. All these experiences have had a significant influence on my artwork.
Nathan Cartwright: Do you study any mystic traditions for subject matter—or just sit around and blow your mind for the creative goods?
Justin Gabriel McInteer: Honestly it’s a bit of both. Curiosity drives my creativity, so I’m always researching some obscure thing or another, but more often than not it’s the aesthetics that I borrow from these traditions rather than the actual concepts. The mechanics and evolution of a flower interests me just as much as the culture that grinds up that flower and ingests it for visionary purposes. It’s everyday magic that really blows my mind.
Nathan Cartwright: Being a gallery owner and a prolific artist is a tough job……….but someone’s got to do it. As an artist/curator like myself, how are you evolving with the Curio on one hand and music/art on the other?
Justin Gabriel McInteer: Evolving is definitely the right word to describe it. It’s been an organic process finding a balance between so many creative disciplines. Echo Curio demands so much of my time, yet the work I’m doing there is so creative and exciting that it feels like I’m still being artistically productive. Nonetheless, creating my own work is what I do best, and after four months in business, I’m just now finding the time to truly lose myself in my work again.
Nathan Cartwright: If MUSIC was to fight ART in an epic battle, who would win?
JGM: Music, no doubt, that shit is tuff! But if you’re talking about an internal battle, I don’t really see a difference between the two. In both my musical adventures, (VxPxC) and Thousands, we approach music as art. As a group we create thematic soundscapes that fill a space the same way an installation would. We are making art; we’re just using a different set of tools to create it.
Nathan Cartwright: What do you plan for your Hive gallery featured show?
Justin Gabriel McInteer: It’s gonna be great. I’m working on a large wall mounted installation created from a number of components. The final piece will be extremely colorful and alluring and hopefully act as an introduction to the concept of psychedelic ecology.
Justin will be the featured artist alongside Kristian Olson at The Hive Gallery and Studios for the month of July- opening July 7th- 31st. For more info on Echo Curio check out its website: www.echocurio.com