FEVER DREAM

Featuring Camilla Alberti, Aris Azarmsa, Emma Beatrez, Filippo Cegani, Kiah Celeste, John Denniston II, Veronica Fernandez, Kendalle Getty, Ridley Howard, Sonia Jia, Manal Kara, Dew Kim, Anastasia Komar, Keunmin Lee, Xin Liu, Bridget Mullen, Rose Nestler, Christine Rebhuhn, Meredith Sellers, Andrew Sendor, Daniel Swanigan Snow

January 13th - Feabruary 13th 2024

Swivel Gallery is thrilled to present “Fever Dream”, a group exhibition bringing to life a selection of works that flow strangely through space, twisting, weaving, discombobulating, and mimicking the dream world. Thoughts turn into signs, emotions become mobile, metaphorical expressions retain literal meaning, while danger and immortality are disguised through symbols.

The show aims to reflect how artwork can apply the four stages of “dream work” through various forms. First theorized by Sigmund Freud (The Interpretation Of Dreams, 1899), these stages have since been elaborated by different thinkers in artistic and scientific fields, within psychology, visual studies and philosophy.

The first stage, ‘Condensation’ distills and combines several latent elements weaving a common thread into one single idea “Through condensation objectionable thoughts are disguised by being broken into elements and formed into new obscure combination, resulting in such phenomena as mixed images or composite persons bearing the feature of several different individuals” (Blum, 1969).

However, each idea is attached to an emotional aspect which might be repressed or removed while in a conscious state : these elements reemerge in dreams as in art in the ‘Displacement’ stage, with improbable associations resulting in a bizarreness, even a complete absurdity holding the power of an unexpected epiphany.

The third stage, ‘Dramatization’ constitutes the process of becoming conscious within the dream or the creation of art, in which the latent content is converted into concrete visual images. Finally, ‘Secondary Elaboration’, provides some sense of meaning to the dream. Pulling from the senseless mass of largely disconnected and distorted pictures, the dream becomes a unified whole, a coherent story is made in a more rational setting, often foreshadowing elements manifesting in daily life.

Contreras intentionally highlights this vulnerability of one's sexual instinct for its counterpart, seeking and grasping towards higher purposes to preserve balance and love. These works guide us towards the realms of a collective consciousness, where natural elements and creatures can coexist beyond the constraints of civilization, society, and religious taboo. Alejandro García Contreras’ work is a holistic and syncretic ode to our innite individualities, encouraging us to embrace a new spiritual universality.

In art creation as in dream work, the subconscious ciphering converts the latent content (a series of psychic experiences) into the manifested content as acceptable representations of residual consciousness. The repressed can re-emerge and reveal itself in a free flow of energy from the psyche, thus overcoming socio-psychological constrictions. Intended as a montage of the subconscious, the artworks included in this show follow a process of association free from any control typically imposed through consciousness.

Dreams, as art, can lead one towards wholeness through what Jung refers to as a dialogue between the ego and the self. At times they can be scary, appearing illogical or incoherent but dreams to not deceive, distort or disguise. They drive/push us to cling to the inherent depth of things, confronting the abyssal truths of the subconscious - where the conscious state is only the tip of the iceberg. The works featured in this exhibition manifest these sentiments throughout the space, creating a site sitting vividly in simultaneous relation to the ‘three orders’ of our worldly perception : the real, the symbolic and the imaginary. As in a Fever Dream, these pictorial and sculptural assemblages of seemingly chaotic and random symbolic association provide us with access to new revelations regarding our perception and subconscious.