Alexander Ugay + Roman Maskalev, Cosmic Uncertainty

THE DREAM OF REASON

Tom Dale, Anthony Discenza, Lauren Kirkman, Frederick Loomis, Elysa Lozano, Inês Rebelo, Alexander Ugay + Roman Maskalev

curated by the artists Elysa Lozano, Inês Rebelo

Press View: Thursday June 8, 4 - 6 PM
Opening: Thursday, June 8, 6 - 9 PM*
Open: Thursday June 8 - Sunday July 2, Thurs - Sun, 12 - 6 PM
Or by Appointment:
Elysa Lozano 0790 620 4288
Inês Rebelo 0795 281 0753
thedreamofreason@gmail.com

The Concept
On a Goya etching one can read «El sueño de la razón produce monstruos» next to a human figure surrounded by demoniacal animals. The English translation of the text is ambiguous, as sueño means sleep but also dream. And one cannot avoid wondering if the man in the etching desires to awake reason, or if his faith in reason has created the monsters. We begin to project into the space of this ambiguity.

We can see that the dream is built into the production of technology and science: there is the yearning for something greater or the motivation to create something as yet unknown that drives the production. And to get to that next step, a creative leap beyond the rules (the known) is necessary. A scientist in the laboratory follows a methodical process until a certain point, when he must blindly trust his imagination of what he might produce.

The scientist’s processes and mechanics also become fantasies in the public imagination, as in science-fiction. When one looks at a more or less popular image of a near future (utopic or dystopic), it seems that a door is open to immense imaginative possibilities. Technology opens that door through which we are seeing a hyperbolic distortion of the present. What we see in the present then is the belief in technology to usher in the future.

Our project is set up as an experimental laboratory where the field of science, technological devices and rigorous processes are to be found in the same place as fantasy and dreams. The work examines these spheres in their analogous role as tools, but the discrete moments of clarity in individual works fizzle and crack against each other, distorting a single method of understanding and disagreeing on the end result.

Elysa Lozano and Inês Rebelo

* A catalogue accompanying the exhibition will be launched at the opening.

Anthony Discenza, November

The Artists

all images courtesy the artists