Talia Wetzlar

Artist Catalogue

Virtual Exhibition

From time to time, I wake in sleep.

‘But I can’t choose my dreams. Nobody can.’

She sagged. ‘I forgot. As soon as I accept this thing as real, I keep thinking it’s something you can control. But you can’t. You just do it.’

‘I don’t do anything,’ Orr said morosely. ‘I never have done anything. I just dream. And then it is.’ - The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

 

Are dreams real or unreal? What defines reality? Are my dreams real only because I am a conduit for their reality? Does my making them physical, situating them in the waking world, render them more real than unreal? From time to time, I wake in sleep is a dreamscape. It is

a space marked by potential where the membrane between reality and unreality is so thin as

to be non-existent. In this dreamscape, reality and unreality cross each other in the mist. The

mist is the no-mans-land between our conscious and unconscious minds where both reality and unreality collapse into one another. It is a space of potential. I began to think of this potential space as the site where my work must be located. My work manifests there, in the mist, and is meant to be met there. When people step into the mist, there they can exist and not exist at the same time. There they are both a dream and a reality. There is meaning, and they are rendered meaningless.

 

You have to make art that means something. But now the child is dead. - An excerpt

from my journal

 

From time to time, I wake in sleep was borne from my own dreams. Keeping a dream journal unlocked a hidden reality outside of my reach. The more diligently I recorded my dreams, the more this other world became a figure on my periphery that slunk away when I turned to take a closer look. I was capturing the vestiges of my dreams. The remnants of these dreams were like the stain of light behind your eyelids after you have looked too long at the sun. I have no interest in interpreting these dreams, though some people might. I don’t look to them as an answer but rather as a question to be explored and held with a loose grip.

 

‘Did you ever happen to think, Dr Haber,’ he said, quietly enough but stuttering a

little, ‘that there might be other people who dream the way I do? That reality’s being

changed out from under us, replaced, renewed, all the time - only we don’t know it?

Only the dreamer knows it, and those who know his dream.’ - The Lathe of Heaven

by Ursula K. Le Guin.