Josh Mannis & The psychedelic influence

There is a definite psychedelic/ 1970's National Geographic quality about your work, would you say that is what your stuff is about (psychadelia) or does it go beyond that? What kinds of influences come through in your work?

Psychedelic art was a huge pushing off point for me, although I'm hoping history will show these cultural references as bits of evidence being deployed in a much larger argument. In a broader sense, my big project is about ways in which an image can get over on and manipulate its beholder - in both the making and the viewing of a piece. The reverse is an image that grants permission, or seems to address a viewer as an equal, or as a partner in the process of generating the meaning of the piece. I guess these are also political ideas, in the sense that they are about how an artwork, through these modes of address, generates and determines the nature of a social space inhabited by artist - piece - viewer(s), and I think it gets at what we want out of an image in the first place. Drug culture, rock culture, art culture, political culture, and etc., are all metaphors I've used in the past, to act inside of, with the aim of theatricalizing these larger themes of the overbearing image, the permissive image, the fascist image, the leftist image, etc.

FULL INTERVIEW HERE