Dreamweaver

If you’re swimming then you have lost something important. If you’re flying then your heart’s been broken. If you sit at a table before a deck of cards then you are afraid of getting older. If you undress beneath a single spotlight then you are about to commit a crime. If you are singing while holding a Spanish guitar then someone you know has passed away. If you are preparing to leap from a balcony then you are mourning the loss of your childhood. If you place your lips to the breast of a cloud then you have forgotten to say your prayers. If you run three red lights in a row then there is a lesson you still haven’t learned. If you pull water from an old well then your father is preparing to call you long distance. If you hear music playing from another house on your street then your sister is about to come back from the dead. If you cup your hands as a hard rain begins then you are days away from falling in love. If you find that you cannot run when you want to then there is a book that you need to reread. If you awaken in a field of strawberries then a long journey awaits you. If you eat the strawberries then you won’t be going alone. (Dream Journal, Kareem Tayyar) What I find fascinating about Kareem Tayyar’s Dream Journal is the ease with which he brings the untouchable dimension of dreams into our explainable, logical human understanding. And he does this by simply presenting us with a meaning. If that happens, then this will follow - action followed by consequence. Whether the action took place in the physical world or the immaterial world of dreams is not so important. If you awaken in a field of strawberries, chances are you have a long journey ahead of you. Regardless of whether waking up in a field of strawberries sounds nonsensical or even delusional, a long journey seems about right, doesn’t it? And so the strawberry field suddenly also begins to feel believable, almost logical. We materialise it before our eyes, the size of it, the height of the strawberry plants, the deep green of their leaves. Maarten Van Roy’s works, which in this exhibition take the form of various objects, are certainly very p physical, belonging to the tangible. Not only are they objects that we are well familiar with from our everyday existence, but they are also objects that require our bodily engagement in order to use or interact with them in real life. Something about the fabrication and materiality of these pieces anchors us to the visible, makes us feel awake. It is the way the objects are placed in the space, how they interact with Zrnec’s works and the way they lead us through the exhibition that makes us wonder - is this the dream or is it its consequence? Scattered in a way that seems both random and perfectly calculated and predicted, Van Roy’s works suddenly pull the carpet out from under our feet and send us back to the strawberry field. Leaving us not quite sure anymore if we are awake or not. Dino Zrnec’s works, on the other hand, despite their physicality, inhabit the immaterial. Calm, coherent, stretching our gaze and imagination while keeping us constantly on our toes, questioning - is it or is it not? They certainly remind us of situations or objects we’ve seen or experienced before, but the thing is that we can never be absolutely sure what we’re looking at. It is like having a dream in which you are sitting on the bed in a hotel room, one that you even remember from a real trip through the human world, and suddenly you find yourself on the steps of your primary school, barefoot and with a wobbly front tooth. Wait, what happened? Exactly. You are still in the strawberry field, you were never awake. While Maarten Van Roy offers us the then, Dino Zrnec approaches us with an if. Dreamweaver weaves dreams into the physical and dreams of weavings, old Ikea beds and fountains in a mist of fuchsia pink.