This book is a trip. A trip through the visual realms of the artist Fabian Marti. Its prevailing cosmic black is subtly accentuated now and then by color: the milky white of mountain crystal, the raw dun of rock caves, the sandy beige of pillared Greek ruins. Or color as a by-product of alchemistic photogram processes. The shapes are original and familiar. Marti reinterprets symbols and reviews the cultural history of modernity and beyond. A journey through time as past and present blend in simultaneity. Digital and analog united. Scanned objects revealed: mushrooms, stones, toast, a pair of hands. And modified pictures from outside sources.

This is a book about altered states of consciousness triggered by substances and shapes. It’s about spiritual views and mystical experiences – and their negation. Not somber, not sad, not heavy, but contemplative and awake. An oscillation between yes and no. The picture section is rounded out by essays by Erik Davis and by Irish philosopher Paul J. Ennis.

Fabian Marti was born in 1979 in Fribourg. He lives in Zu?rich and Los Angeles.