The term ‘phantasmata’ can be used to describe a product of the imagination, an apparition, a spectre, or a hallucination. The latter refers to perception without an object – a mental or physical creation in the absence of external stimuli. It materialises from our inner world, intruding into conscious life.
Public Gallery is pleased to present Phantasmata, a group exhibition that explores this phenomenon. The artworks featured straddle representation and abstraction, their dynamic combinations of form and colour striking a balance between disintegration and recognition. Objects appear, seeming to slip between states of reality and the unconscious, on the border of wakefulness and sleep, tactile and immaterial.
The hallucinator is a visionary – they see things that others do not. Playing with our instincts, creating tension and disorientation, the participating artists contemplate the ambiguity of the image free from the logic that typically governs traditional modes of depiction. Collectively, they invite the viewer to consider to what extent the so-called immaterial and illusory is actually another species of reality.
