Dear reader, you lost traveller who have found this book amidst bits, bytes, expletives, colours, sounds and scents, you will not find art history here. This story is not in the past tense. Let yourself be carried by these images. Listen to their voices. Abandon expectations and your viewing habits. Construct your own constellations of meaning. Some of these artworks have travelled a long way before arriving here, liberated from the timeless place by the powers od imagination. Others manifested themselves before they were made, invoked by the spell of their own creation. Self-conceived, self-made, barely touched by their creators.
Welcome to Chaosmos. It has many avatars. It has many undercurrents. There are 21 worlds here, all in paintings, drawings, objects, graphics and photographs. We have found, come to cherish and are asked to join 21 artists within these worlds. Despite their incredible diversity there is one quality they are share - each one's ast is marked with the spirit of Hermeticism, even when the iconography itself does not betray such influence. Chaosmos is a space of concergence for masonic and alchemical symbolism, artists' books and grimoires, tantric and alchemical iconography, surrealism, psychedelia and automatic drawing. It is a field of tensions that make up the Western esoteric tradition, which also anticipates our present.
Dariusz Misiuna
