THE DREAMERS

The exhibition titled The Dreamers intends to question not only the misleading and ambiguous nature of the real but the space occupied by dreams—intended as the metaphorical embodiment of a space of freedom—which is able to challenge the certainty of the real world, of acquired knowledge and of our own beliefs.

For centuries philosophers have asked to what extent our external world can legitimately be considered real, utilizing the oneiric as an argument to criticize our most common certainties.

Today, the accelerated development of the new technologies seems to have overturned the issue. The possibility of creating and taking part in increasingly refined virtual spaces seems to represent an escape from reality, an escape towards a dimension that is not strictly oneiric, but that is undoubtedly related to our dreams.

In a world where cultural, religious, and even expressive barriers are increasingly being tightened, artists react to the paradoxical coincidence of antithetic attitudes — openness, permeability, distrust, and rejection — with the construction of a new space. A space where racial, sexual and social freedom and imaginaries can be experimented with, a place where art does not have one form but many, thanks to the constant ‘giving back and forth’ between the virtual and the physical.

The question is: how can we perceive today’s world? What are the conditionings that interfere in the capacity to critically experience reality? How can artists explain the complexity of the human being in our current times? In this multi-faceted world, dreams are an essential need for human beings. “The dreamers” become the inhabitants of a metaphorical world where no barriers, no limits, and no borders can limit the access to a land where we can re-think our own time, rules, and attitudes and configure new scenarios and ways. A place where past, present and future are no longer existing categories and a suspended world defines the formation of a new era.

Ilaria Marotta & Andrea Baccin