calendario eventi  :: 

X

26/1/2005

DreamingNow

The Rose Art Museum, Waltham

Curated by The Rose's curator, Raphaela Platow

Featured artists
Marina Abramovic, former Yugoslavia. William Kentridge, South Africa. Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Cuba. Cai Guo Quiang, China. Sandra Cinto, Brazil. Chiharu Shiota, Japan. Frans Jacobi, Denmark. David Solow, U.S.

Rose Exhibition Fills Museum with New Dimensions on the Meaning of Dreams

The Rose Art Museum presents DreamingNow, January 27 - April 24, 2005, an innovative exploration of the meaning of dreams. It features eight artists from around the world, both emerging and established, who create mixed media installations. Three of the artists will create new installations on-site for this project. DreamingNow is the first exhibition to mark the shift from a conventional understanding of dreams as highly personal and private to one that envisions the political and social potential of dreaming.

Rose curator Raphaela Platow writes in her curatorial statement, "DreamingNow fosters a new perspective on dreams at the beginning of the 21st century . . . which challenges the modernist division of inside/outside and ego/world by recognizing the individual as part of a larger societal structure." She says dreams as "mirrors of societies and their social conditions . . . can provide a unique insight into the world we live in and how we might be inspired to change it."

The artists in DreamingNow create large-scale environments which the visitor moves through. Each installation reflects the unique cultural perspective of its creator.

Chiharu Shiota will place 15 beds on the lower level of the Rose building. These will be woven together by webs of black yarn. As curator Platow asserts, the connections that the artist creates between the beds make a statement that dreaming is a "collective experience that reflects the conditions and circumstances of the self and social life," rather than the purely individual experience that it has been perceived to be.

Sandra Cinto will construct a large-scale wall drawing on seven separate panels. Painted on dark blue surfaces, her signature drawings in silver feature her unique dreamscape of stars, islands, ladders, and ocean waves. Part of a series she calls Nights of Hope, the delicately rendered symbolic dreamscape is imbued with the potency and ability to transform reality and to allow for new possibilities to emerge. As the artist says, "It is through dreams, through the capacity of dreaming that we can face our anguish and search for a happier life."

In Marina Abramovic's installation, the artist creates a unique opportunity for visitors to engage with her work and to become part of the exhibition itself. Her Dream Bed invites visitors to enter a private space and sleep in the "Dream Bed" for an hour, thus participating in the unusual experience of dreaming within a public space. The participants are then asked to record their dreams in a "Dream Book," the result being a collection of dreams connected by space, experience, and community. Visitors interested in participating in this rare interactive experiment may reserve an hour in the "Dream Bed" during the museum's public hours by contacting the Rose.

Cai Guo Quiang's work, Dream, is a large-scale wall-to-wall installation of a red silk flag stretched across the floor. Fans anchored beneath the fabric inflate the flag so that it takes the shape of a massive bed. The silk billows and ripples, assuming the appearance of a wind-swept sea. Myriad lanterns made from the same red silk (an emotionally and politically charged color associated with Communism) are suspended from the ceiling and cast the only light in the room. The red lanterns take on the surprising shapes of automobiles, refrigerators, fighter planes and laptop computers. For Cai, the dream world is inseparable from the consumerism and militarism of modern China.

In David Solow's installation, the visitor enters a small room hung with layers of blankets. The floor of the room, lined with tin to resemble a roof, slopes precipitously upward toward a tub filled with water in the center. A video projector mounted on the ceiling projects an image of the artist's nude body into the pool of water. As the image changes, Solow's body merges with images of other people's bodies, momentarily taking on their shapes, and becoming one with each of them in turn. A soundscape of recorded dream-narratives emanates from the surrounding drapery of blankets. In this work, clearly demarcated categories of race, sexual identity, and gender become dispersed, diffused, and commingled.

A catalogue with contributions by Kelly Bulkeley, Montague Ullman, Anthony Vidler, and exhibition curator Raphaela Platow accompanies the exhibition. A series of programs related to the exhibition will be offered for the public and for museum members.

The Rose Art Museum
MS 069 Brandeis University
P.O. Box 549110
415 South Street Waltham, MA 02454-9110 USA
On the campus of Brandeis University
415 South Street
Commuter rail stop at Brandeis/Roberts Station
Hours:
Tuesday-Sunday: Noon - 5 pm.
Closed Mondays and University/national holidays

stampa

permanent link