The Dream of Rooms

The Dream of Rooms explores the significance of rooms and other everyday structures (such as furniture) as mediators between our lives and a chaotic reality. It seeks to view structure as both protective and malevolent, restrictive.  Rooms are interpreted as having a twofold significance, on a physical level there is the actual architectural maze we inhabit, that we know is replicated in every direction around us, but also on a mental level rooms are analogous to the various useful but limiting contextual frameworks we need to make sense of the world. These two realities, the mental and physical are seen as joined, as being reflections of one another.

My work is generally based around bringing together disparate visual languages to investigate the space that is created by their juxtaposition.  When two seemingly opposing visual languages (such as representation and abstraction for instance) are brought together the limiting contextual boundaries of each system is broken down and a new contextual space is created.  The intention is not to come to a midway point or reconciliation, but rather to look into what philosopher Slavoj Zizek refers to as the ‘Parallax Gap’- that space created by the imposed crossing of two incompatible readings ( of a subject ).  This space is not a negative void, but rather holds a more comprehensive understanding of the subject, in the same way that the parallax gap between our eyes gives us the ability to see in three dimensions.

In The Dream of Rooms, by pitting structured ‘rational’ perspective  against ‘subjective’ abstract gestures I want to explore an unexpected and pregnant resulting visual space that is an alternative reading of architecture and the built environment we inhabit. The use of paper as the primary medium refers to the activity of planning - of giving ideas their first concrete form - but a rationalist or utilitarian explanation is avoided - instead the subjective of modern urban space is explored - that which is left over after the production process.

The Dream of Rooms

Born into a room, he learned to move from room to room.

Sometimes vistas, great halls opened up before him, while otherwise corridors just snaked off towards uncertain ends.

When things got tight he knew he could not stretch out to his full length, anticipating even what the walls would feel like - mineral. 

The certainty of rooms was greater than his, their simple geometry a ready lesson in consistency. His own presence by contrast seemed to constitute a sort of vagrancy, the life cycle of a ghost.

At times passing through this labyrinth he had the sensation of moving through someone else’s mind, and one so much better than his own, a master mind.

Stepping past the threshold into the outside, first he had the feeling of expansion and defusion.  But as his senses opened out toward endlessness he realised he was in a larger room, defined by the limits of his own perception, where he would always stay. 

He decided then what had to be done; he would spend his days traversing the endless geometry, always responding to it with his heart open, but always moving on.

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