Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne Plots Art Exhibit Debut
Wayne Coyne‘s visual weirdness is embedded in the Flaming Lips‘ DNA – from psychedelic stage designs to experimental music video concepts. Now Coyne is making his museum debut with “King’s Mouth,” an art installation opening October 3rd at Baltimore’s American Visionary Art Museum.
“King’s Mouth” will appear in American Visionary’s “The Big Hope” exhibition, which features drawings and sculptures from dozens of artists “thematically explor[ing] issues relating to hope and transcendent survival,” according to a statement.
“Wayne Coyne’s work is among the most jubilant in our ‘Big Hope’ Show,” says American Visionary founder Rebecca Hoffberger, who is curating the exhibition. “Surviving a violent, near-death experience awakened in him a joy and a tsunami of endless creativity rarely seen in anyone. His drawings remind me of those most beloved by Saint-Exupéry; his lyrics are poetry.”
Other featured artists include John Waters photographer/documentarian Bob Adams, artist Margaret Munz-Losch and activist/artist Jackie Sumell. The exhibition will run through August 2016.
The American Visionary Art Museum, established in 1995, specializes in “intuitive art” or “outsider art” and has displayed work from a range of inmates, farmers, housewives, disabled persons, mechanics and celebrities not primarily known for their visual art. The latter list includes Jimi Hendrix, Terrence Howard, William S. Burroughs, chef Mario Batali and cartoonist R. Crumb.
The Flaming Lips‘ last album of original material, The Terror, came out in 2013 – and they followed with last year’s With a Little Help From My Fwends, an all-star, track-by-track remake of the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. In May, Coyne announced the psych-rock legends’ next move: a seven-track collaborative LP with Miley Cyrus. “She does the pop thing so great, so it still feels pop, but a slightly wiser, sadder, more true version,” Coyne said of the album. “Some of it reminds me of Pink Floyd and Portishead.”