“Dreaming Awake” invites visitors to experience a tropical rainforest

(Maastricht, Netherlands)

For the last three years, the Marres House of Contemporary Art has been developing exhibitions focused on all-encompassing single works. Now it’s time for the Dutch institution to welcome two Brazilian artists, Daniel Steegman Mangrané and Luiz Zerbini, together with the French artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, to inaugurate yet another edition of the project. Titled “Dreaming Awake”, the group show opens this Saturday, March 10th.

This time, the exhibition evokes the Amazon forest, in all its moist, damp and breathtaking form. Bringing the experience of touch caused by strong outside forces to the visitors of Marres, it is composed of three parts, each made by one of the guest artists. The ground floor was transformed by Zerbini into a living quasi-painting, featuring multiple plant species chosen one by one to create a colourful total forest-garden. Gonzalez-Foerster presents “Promenade 2”, a sound installation that asks the visitors to forget our spatial settings and experience the sound of a tropical rainstorm.

Finally, PIPA Prize 2014 finalist, Steegman Mangrané screens two works in the exhibition, both produced in the Atlantic Forest, in the Brazilian Southeast. “Spiral Forest” depicts the jungle through a hinged, gyroscope camera that rotates 360 degrees, creating a kind of swirl. “Phantom”, on the other hand, asks its spectators to move through a black-and-white forest through a virtual device. Watch a teaser film of the exhibition:

“Dreaming Awake”, group show featuring Daniel Steegman Mangrané, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Luiz Zerbini
Curated by Luiza Mello and Valentijn Byvanck
On view from March 10th through June 3rd, 2018