December 14, 2022 - February 22, 2023

Jude Broughan

Adriana Farmiga

Rune Olsen

Gabriela Vainsencher

Juana Valdes

Mandy Cano Villalobos

Charlotta Westergren

Checklist (PDF)

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Notes on Dreaming

by Samuel Draxler

(Catalog Essay)

In the threat simulation theory of dreaming, negative dreams and nightmares function as rehearsals to help navigate real life threats. While the theory concerns the individual, dreams operate on a social scale as well. But rather than preparing us, the national fantasy of the American Dream has accelerated ecological collapse, an unending pandemic, housing and economic crises, and a weakening social contract. What are we rehearsing through the collective dreams of the present?

A home of one’s own is out of reach for most, and in Rune Olsen’s Bathroom Drawing (inspiration), collaged cut-outs of tubs, showers, faucets, and fixtures are arranged over a tiled floor drafted in linear perspective. The “inspiration” recalls using mood boards or Pinterest for home renovation, but instead of the tasteful design favored by the market, the space is jagged and unsettled, with a lone figure obscured behind a mirror-like gradient. Olsen’s to Such Great Heights uses related domestic materials (copper piping, a bathtub) dissected and welded into a sculptural form that seems to reach upwards. The exclusionary spaces of moneyed architecture can be subverted: brightly colored textiles spread softly over the topiary ball form of Mandy Cano Villalobos’s September Song, recoding the traditional underlying form through the floating ephemera of a personal life.

The natural world once promised limitlessness resources, but that bounty has been cut short. Charlotta Westergren’s Gardening 6 and Gardening 7 take the form of wall sconces with botanical glass elements echoing their brass tubing. Hanging cherries recall the symbols of a slot machine, and on the gallery walls painted mice emerge as sculptures in relief — one eating cherries as if snatched from above. In these works, the built environment and the natural are delicately balanced — a prize we’re forced to question. The finiteness of resources also inflects Jude Broughan’s Sunshine Haircare Bars and Tube, a photograph of shampoo and conditioner bars standing balanced beside a plastic tube of another product. Textured orange vinyl is sewn onto the surface of the photograph: these bright forms emphasize the abstracted form of the small, totemic sculpture with its dappled colors, but they also physically wrap the work, shifting consideration back onto the tube’s packaging.

Loss and mourning run through any assessment of the current scenario. Gabriela Vainsencher’s photographs Treasure 03, Treasure 07 and Treasure 09 evoke the absence of precious artifacts. The objects are gone – excavated from their site, excised from their catalogue pages – but their existence is implied by their plinth and shadow. The negation is an open wound and a reminder of loss. In Juana Valdés’s Thirst, a luxury water bottle is translated from plastic into porcelain, its preciousness made clear. While water scarcity disproportionately affects marginalized populations, plastic consumables marketed towards the wealthy remain profitable. Encased in stone as if a fossil, the flask hints towards the extinction that may follow this rising tension.

To say that something feels like a dream is to declare it pleasant, but to mark it as unreal. The two still lives by Adriana Farmiga both feature pairs of objects against a minimal backdrop. In XX two feathers arc gently away from one another over a mottled pink ground, seemingly depicting one X chromosome of a female-coded pair. Para:Sympathetic, the title referencing the nervous system driving bodily operations towards rest and relaxation, shows a cocktail umbrella next to a taped scrap of gift wrap. The future is female, and it’s happy hour.

A dreamscape extends indefinitely – no margins, none marginalized.