Phantasma is a group exhibition exploring imagination, dreams, and illusions in contemporary painting. Featuring works by Alex Sutcliffe, Alic Brock, Darina Karpov, Henry Hung Chang, Jamie Adams, Tang Shuo, and Vickie Vainionpää, the show will open with a public reception in our lower gallery on March 12, from 6–8 PM. It will be on view through April 19.
Since time immemorial, great thinkers have debated the nature of imagination. According to the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, fantasy—or phantasma—represents a false appearance, an illusion that deceives the senses and occupies the lowest level of reality. Aristotle, on the other hand, believed that the image-making faculty of the soul (phantasia) makes the higher processes of thinking possible. As he wrote in De Anima, “The soul never thinks without a phantasm.”
The images that enter our minds from the outside world have changed dramatically over the centuries, expanding our internal cache of archetypal figures and individual phantasmata (the plural of phantasma). The pace and scale at which we consume images have also accelerated. Alongside the centuries-old foundations of printed matter, theater, and fine art, films, online videos, social media posts, and the endless scroll of our own camera rolls now contribute to our vast imaginative picture libraries—inevitably invading our dreams and fantasies.
Both portraits by Jamie Adams (b. 1961, Pittsburgh, PA) conjure the image of Jean Seberg—a recurring character in his work, perhaps his ultimate phantasma—as her iconic heroine in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 film Breathless. In Jeannie’s Blue Suit, the artist depicts her as an English dandy perched on an upholstered armchair; in Mama’s Dream, she lies asleep in her 1960s apartment, dreaming of a circus performer with elongated limbs—or perhaps being dreamed up by him. The presence of a notebook and a curled-up dog, real or illusory, further complicates the scene. Childhood memories, a film crush, current family dynamics, and the specter of art history coexist in quiet harmony—imagination operates in circuitous ways.