Phantasm a derivation of the Greek phantasma is a reference to an image real or imagined, made visible. A visual outcome in the form of what gets defined as an image is an expansion of a tiny seed of imagination. In beginning to expand this imagination, all borders dissolve, rules break free and fantasy takes over in the shape of mythic figures, fluid sounds, and abstract forms of land and nature. The endless possibilities of imagination, the quest for the unknown, a desire for something new, the fidgety nature of comfort into boredom, and the curiosity of wonder are some ways in which fantasy’s amoebic form spreads.
Memory, time, and space are a premise on which works ranging in medium and materiality move through form and ideas. A shape-shifting pattern, fantasy becomes a multifaceted concept that holds different truths and many assumptions. The prisms that refract meaning for this world of fantasy go deep into the mind to extract beings, colors, sounds, and shapes that exist on the periphery of the real world. On recognising one’s surroundings these forms very easily tip back into phantasma, a non-existence of real being.
The artists invited to this exhibition look at fantasy not just as an arrival to an end but rather as a creation leading into new realms of hopes, desires, and futures. Their notions of fantasy are not just imagined concepts, but often lived ones. With references to mythology from where unknown creatures set a path for oral histories and stories to be told over time, to discoveries of imagined universes within Earth itself, and personal narratives of intimate new worlds, the idea of fantasy expands beyond a residual wonderland. The exhibition moves towards a Phantasm that works to overcome through propositions, limitations of the human mind, and actions in the world. The fantastical present within Phantasm works to heal, resolve, and empower suppressed thoughts, truths, and desired outcomes into new ways of looking, listening, and experiencing everyday life with tenderness that is vulnerable yet powerful.