OFLUXO

According to the “simulation hypothesis”, what we experience as reality is actually a giant computer simulation created by a more sophisticated intelligence. We can compare it to the video games, those that are created with no definitive ending, allowing the player to explore, discover, feel indefinitely. Harun Farocki’s film Parallel, describes how software helps video characters stay within the game’s borders and not fall out of the artificially created landscapes of the games world.

“Terrible Dreams” is an exhibition where artist creates microcosm, landscape, which can be observed from both – from inside, and from outside (from behind the gallery’s’ glass vitrine) – much like as the video game by its player – observed and experienced.

Dry, desert-like plants are one part of the installation. These plants are inseparable part of the artists’ hometown, and were collected there. These earth-colored plants, grooving from the soil and volcanic black stones that are randomly placed all around the gallery floor, are presented as a living sculpture of the exhibition and give the space more Zoo-alike, greenhouse feeling- emphasising the “artificial naturalism” effect. In this atmosphere, in this scenario, plants create shadows, that look like a maze, and cover the space with its mysticism.

Much like video games with never ending plot, repetition/continuation/endlessness of things is present in Anas’ work. Rendering of the same objects and characters into different dimensions in order to “perfect” them, or to create “glitch in the game” effect is much visible in “terrible Dreams” as well: small pond seen in her painting might be found as a sculpture somewhere in the installation; clay flower might transcend into the drawing, and there create the space without a main actor, waiting for one to appear.

“Terrible Dreams” – whole installation with its paintings, drawings, sculptures – feels like a stroll in the night forest: where shadows from the Lianas confuse your path, and reflections from dark waters show you the way out, just to lead you into the new dimensions of the game, still without the main character, still into the abandoned place where wild roses are overgrown onto the windows, and every road you can take, leads back into the game.