The Dreamer
Posted on May 13 2021
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Authors A Muratore, S Colombo
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The Dreamer │ 23 April - 20 May 2021
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As in the experience of dream, the dreamer is immersed in the world of images and inner perceptions, in a more or less conscious state of detachment from the perceptible world, and transported by osmosis by the call of an idea or an image in which the "dreamer" finds an answer to a request of fulfillment of the senses. Hopes, memories and fantasies attract the "dreamer" to the same world in which the will and of a goal finds its first phase of creation. Every aesthetic production arises from here, from the conscious thought and image, manifested by the “dreamer", receiver and transmitter of himself through the means of his own existence.
“The Dreamer” is the title of the group exhibition arranged at Spazio Millepiani in Rome and open to the public between April and May. Overall, the works on show are capable of affirming something and its opposite. They meet and clash and together they explode. Let the dream be in the spotlight means actually giving the artist carte blanche, allowing him/her to begin with a clean slate where something peculiar, a unique story can be re-built, re-written. Also, it implies that there is room for unknown textures, endless possibilities dealing with various - sometimes opposite - topics, techniques and colours.
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Olivia Crumm, Untitled, 2020
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This dream dimension makes the abstract concrete, the impossible possible: that is the main theme guiding us through the exhibition rooms. Along the way, we will encounter some stops where standing is not just licit, but also requested by the works demanding our complete attention. First of all, we have to consider the dream in its rather ambivalent interpretation. On the one hand, it can be considered as the night vision triggered by our subconscious (until it reaches its limit, becoming a nightmare), while on the other hand it can be seen as the expression of our aspirations. It is exactly for this reason that the images and videos expressing these features show techniques and colours in line with a state of alteration. In fact, they are characterised by blurred contours merging with each other and losing shapes in favour of nuanced, milky or misty appearances. Moreover, a more varied palette leaves space for the binomial black and white, for pastel shades or, where uncertainty and fear prevail, for strong and acid contrasts.
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Rada Nastai, Sophie, 2016
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This ambivalence is more or less the same applicable to the sleep-wake cycle when considered as a metaphor for life and death. The constant repetition and transition from one condition to the other is comparable with the vital cycle we experience once passing from life to death. Looking at the faces portrayed in some of those artworks - often extreme close-up full of details - one spontaneously asks himself/herself: is this temporary or permanent sleep? Is it a short nap or an eternal sleep? From another point of view, the association between dream and un-reality (or rather sur-reality?) is predominant where endless and desolate landscapes make humans almost disappear. And when still there, they play a secondary role, being restless presences that are probably watching us. Within those silent and bleak views, the true protagonists are those landscapes as well as urban scenes reminding us of some artistic expressions. Impossible not to think of the daily paradoxes painted by Magritte and of the deserted rooms conceived by Hopper.
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In conclusion, the dream - and the dreamer - is nothing more than a transition. This is the concept incorporating all the others mentioned above. Starting from this idea, the artists have produced works depicting different spaces and times. Some of them travel through history, some overlap and layer diverse characters and sites and some others intend to capture a topic transformation - between different stages of life and beyond.
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Michal Korta, Untitled, Radical Self Portrait, 2018
Michal Korta, Outside World, Isolation Dream, 2012
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Catherene Lee, Dirty Mirror, 2020
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Julia Ivashkina, The Only Darkness We Should Allow, 2017
Sven Windszus, Pure White, 2018
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Charles Birnbaum, And All Things Came From The One, 2020
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Lara Gilks, Ghost Light, 2020
Rhea Gupte, The Dreamer, 2021
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Zoe Antona, Morph, 2020
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Ana Paula Di Berardo, Station, 2020 / Jennifer Maiotti, Earthshine, 2020
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The Dreamer Exhibition Catalogue │Buy it
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