"Snooze"

Bettina Cohnen

Alessandro Dal Pont

Patrick Meagher

Ivan Petrovic

Alessandro Roma

Evan Roth

Aleksandar Zograf

Curated by Marco Antonini

Opening: Friday, May 29, 2009, 6 - 9 pm

Exhibition Dates: May 29 - July 31, 2009

“Hypnagogia” is a term coined by French scholar Alfred Maury (1817-1892) to define the transitional state between sleep and awakening. The word is also used to define a particular kind of dream image, often characterized by the phantasmic persistence of repetitive activities and visions that have left an impression on our subconscious.

De facto engraved in our collective subconscious, the word “Snooze” evokes the common gesture of pausing the alarm clock for a few minutes, extending the blessed (or cursed) time of the day in which hypnagogic visions flourish into a virtually infinite time/space.

The exhibition converges around a studiedly anthropomorphic floor sculpture by Alessandro Dal Pont. The dream activity of Dal Pont’s minimalist character is reflected and fragmented in all the other artworks. Ideally backgrounded by Alessandro Roma’s rich and textured collages of murky, ambiguous landscapes, the photographs of Bettina Cohnen and Ivan Petrovic use sleep and dream-states as a mere departure point for their potentially disquieting narratives. Respectively tapping the boredom of mindless computer work and obsessive-compulsive activity, Patrick Meagher’s and Evan Roth’s visualizations of data processing and Aleksandar Zograf’s record of his own hypnagogic visions will extend the scope of the project by suggesting a possible interpretation of labor and daily habits as alternative dream states.

Exhibition Info:

Additional exhibition information will only be available via a special phone line (revealed at the opening), open from 6:30am to 8:30am for the entire duration of the exhibition. Operated by the curator and/or the artists (who will be forced to reply to any inquiries while dealing with their –and the caller’s– own early morning haziness) this info service will produce an unreliable, fragmented and choral narration, providing a direct correspondence between the dreamy open-endedness of the exhibition’s visual text and its conceptual superstructure.