Dreaming Mirrors Dreaming Screens (Installation view), via Sprüth Magers
For the most recent new exhibition in Berlin, Sprüth Magers has brought together work from thirteen artists under the title Dreaming Mirrors Dreaming Screens.  Curated by Goodroom and Johannes Fricke Waldthausen, the exhibition features works by Lizzie Fitch/Ryan Trecartin, Andy Hope 1930, Oliver Laric, Jon Rafman, and Andro Wekua, among others.  Intended to navigate visitors through the intersecting narratives within the realm of surrealist animation, abstraction and the ideas of “New Materialism” as expressed through the greater logistics of the world wide web, the exhibition references the notion of the screen as a critical tool of the conscious and unconscious, as well as a surface for projections of communication and technological abstraction. Â
Dreaming Mirrors Dreaming Screens (Installation view), via Sprüth Magers
Each artist aims to utilize screens and the concept of the display as a method to transform the conscious mind into a lucid states of both the pragmatic and the dream-like.  The gallery draws inspiration here from Jean Baudrillard: “we used to live in the imaginary world of the mirror and the stage. Today, we live in the imaginary world of the screen, the interface and networks. We too have become screens.”
Taking this into consideration, the artists and their works speak by way of an alternate language of codes, signs and symbols, and their creations seem to reach beyond the consciousness of the mind into realms of fantasy and mystery, where secrets are unveiled through the process of discovery, articulation and conscious navigation.  Screens act as a shield that can entice and reveal information, while also treating truths as a wall that cannot be crossed.  The artists play with their diverse languages, both from humanist origins as well as from the technical languages of the internet, and its distributed networks of humanity to work within the digital realm, and to communicate a new cognitive state pulled back from the landscape of the everyday.
 Dreaming Mirrors Dreaming Screens (Installation view), via Sprüth Magers
Dreaming Mirrors Dreaming Screens (Installation view), via Sprüth Magers
The works on view are particularly ephemeral in their execution, often presenting a faded palette of colors twisted into surreal forms, almost as if to present a spectrum that hints at realms beyond the immediately perceivable or active conscience.  The few sculptures throughout are small, self-contained and equally ephemeral, as if to counter the flat planes of each artist’s respective work with a three dimensional analog, a form of translation that sees form pushed further out into physical space.
The work’s varying ideas and perspectives on self make this sense of transitory work a striking aspect of the show, underscoring a contrast between distinctive acts of subjective expression and a series of technical exercises that make express reference to their own transitory nature.  Combined with each work’s respective subject matter, the show turns its focus on notions of unknown magic and mystery back outwards towards the viewer, where these imagined planes mingle with more tangible concepts of growth and form.
Dreaming Mirrors Dreaming Screens (Installation view), via Sprüth Magers
The exhibition is located at Sprüth Magers, Berlin at Oranienburger Straße 18, D-10178 Berlin.
— A. Zlotowitz and D. Creahan
Read more:
Dreaming Mirrors Dreaming Screens [Exhibition Website]
