What Is Psychedelic traces Aura Rosenberg’s five decade-long career across an array of media, including painting, photography, film, sculpture, and installation. A central figure in the New York and Berlin art scenes, Rosenberg has moved through diverse styles, eschewing a signature mark. She prefers to work thematically and serially, while often returning to ideas from past projects and her imagery often subverts expectations shaping accepted notions of motherhood, sexuality, history, and monumentality.

This publication complements Rosenberg's joint exhibitions at the Mishkin Gallery and Pioneer Works in New York in the spring of 2023. It pairs full-color plates of the artist's work with essays by artists, historians, and curators that offer the first comprehensive overview of Rosenberg's oeuvre. What Is Psychedelic is edited by Alaina Claire Feldman and features texts by Lena Dunham, Alaina Claire Feldman, Matt Keegan, Claire Koron Elat, Laura López Paniagua, Tim Martin, John Miller, Bob Nickas, Barbara Piwowarska, Lumi Tan, and Alexandra Tell.

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Claire Koron Elat is a writer, editor, and curator based in Berlin. She is the editor of 032c and has contributed to publications including Flash Art, Frieze, ArtReview, Monopol, and Berliner Zeitung. In 2022 she founded the initiative angels.sc3 together with Shelly Reich, which is concerned with displaying and contextualizing the intersection of art and fashion through curatorial projects. She is currently in a BA program that combines art history and economics at Humboldt University, Berlin.

Alaina Claire Feldman is director and curator of the Mishkin Gallery at Baruch College, City University of New York, where she also teaches in the Fine and Performing Arts and Macaulay Honors programs. She has curated numerous exhibitions and edited many publications, including most recently Aura Rosenberg: What Is Psychedelic (2023).

John Miller (b. 1954 in Cleveland / USA) is an artist and writer based in New York and Berlin. He has had retrospective exhibitions at the Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin (2020), the ICA Miami (2016), Kunsthalle Zurich (2009), Kunstverein in Hamburg and La Magasin in Grenoble (1999). His publications include Mike Kelley: Educational Complex (Brussels: JRP/Ringier, 2009), The Price Club: Selected Writings (Geneva: JRP/Ringier, 2000), and The Ruin of Exchange: Selected Writings (Zurich, New York: JRP/Ringier, 2012). Miller is a professor of Professional Practice in the Art History Department at Barnard College, New York City.

Aura Rosenberg (b. 1949 in New York) is an artist based in New York and Berlin. Rosenberg has held solo exhibitions including: Angel of History, Bauhaus Museum, Weimar (2022); The Bull, The Girl and The Siegessäule, Efremidis, Berlin (2022); Who Am I? What Am I? Where Am I?, Meredith Rosen Gallery, New York (2022); Statues Also Fall in Love, Martos Gallery, New York (2019); Angel of History, Studio Teatr Galeria, Warsaw (2017); Head Shots (1991–1996), JOAN, Los Angeles (2016); Meliksetian Briggs Gallery, Los Angeles (2014). Her first institutional survey exhibition, What Is Psychedelic, was on view at Mishkin Gallery (Baruch College, City University of New York) and Pioneer Works in New York (2023).