JOHN LIIKALA - THE UNKNOWN FLUXUS ARTIST

 

Since the early 60's I was inspired by "The Medium is the Message" and film-making. The "Something Else Press" etc. My M.A.thesis was on "Visual Ambiguity" and the state of "BLACK" At my 1962 store front gallery at 65 E.4th St., Lower East Side, I did a series of gloss black paintings and showed the next near at the Brata Gallery, 56 3rd Ave., near St.Mark's Place. The art reviewer, Vallery Peterson, refused to read my statement, "I only look". The review" I couldn't, see the paintings because of the shiny surfaces!" "The fleeting experience of your reflective image, and thinking, was the point.) Gained from informal Canyon Cinema weekly hillside screening and informal conversations in Bruce Conner's Berkley Canyon back yard!

Meanwhile, as many "out side the box" visual thinkers I chose not to identify myself with any movement and limit myself. I know Emiley Harvey, Alan Kaprow etc. did fluxus-happenings in the E.3rd. St. site, a sub-basement store where I did the political comment of based on the famous David painting "The Death of Marat", only I and other participants took turns in occupying the tub, reading the current news, Marat, the revolutionary can't get back in his tub, now occupied by news/issues of the current times, integration, Vietnam, art break throughs.
I continued this curiosity to the Bridge Theater in my "Under Ground film Programs", at my "Open Stage" large hall on St.Mark's Place premiering Warhol's exploding Plastic Inevitable", with Nico and the "Velvet Underground" and presenting a lunar surface on the floor at the Waddell Gallery, 1964, where one could "moon walk", in the era odd op & pop no one got it.

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Liilala's FLUXUS HAPPININGS 4th Saint Marks Place, NYC 1964

The original "Lower East Side" art scene!