​​This is an invitation to slow down, to drift, and to feel.

 

Dreams are not built of logic or the laws of reason. They rise from the deep, shaped by unseen forces, memory, desire, and the quiet chaos of the subconscious. We enter a space suspended between memory and invention, a phantasmagoria where inner and outer worlds fold into each other.

This exhibition explores how the fluid logic of dreams mirrors the flow of natural forms; how the body remembers, transforms, and connects to the land; and how internal and external realities merge.

 

Five artists shape a shared, yet distinctly personal dream space: a realm where the body meets the ground, where inner landscapes become visible, and where nature becomes not merely a subject, but a collaborator.

 

At the heart of SOMNIA stands the Dreamer suspended in the soft gravity of unconsciousness. His mouth opens in silent awe or invocation; he is a vessel for the unknown, a silent seer around whom the surreal world unfolds. The Dreamer holds the tension between remembering and imagining, between what was and what might yet be dreamed. He sees with closed eyes, the one who knows without knowing. 

Surrounding the Dreamer unfolds a dreamscape, abstract but symbolic, shifting, and untethered. Not simply scenery, but sensation: a living, breathing manifestation of the unconscious. This is a psychic terrain shaped by intuition rather than gravity. Here, the logic slips, and transformation is the only constant.

 

Nature, body, and dream converge in a soft collision. Natural shapes echo the body’s memory; limbs become branches, bones mirror stone, skin folds into terrain. The body dissolves into the landscape, and the land itself seems to inhale and exhale with a quiet, psychic breath. Shapes flicker between the familiar and the impossible. Symbols emerge like mirages; part wishes, part memory; inviting recognition without certainty. Time stretches. 

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This is a space to be felt more than understood. Not to be explained, but entered.

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List of participating artists:

Eva Krause

Shirley van de Wiel

Mia van der Burg

V&B

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Art direction: 

Vladimir Radujkov

 

 

Counterbodies were made possible by:

Gemeente Rotterdam, Gebiedskomissie Kralingen Crooswijk

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Huge thank you to our partners:

De Achtertuin 

 

 

Special thanks to:

Melanie Tissen

 

 

Photo credits:

Jacqueline Fuijkschot

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