The Sleepwalk, the state between wakefulness and sleep that, despite scientific findings, has become no less mysterious, uncanny and fascinating. Under this title, the works of contemporary artist Ana Mazzei (*1979) will be exhibited at the Green Art Gallery in Dubai from November 15. The inexplicable feeling of waking sleep is also taken up by the spatial staging: Upon entering, only part of the action is visible at first, as the rest is covered by a semi-transparent black curtain. When visitors pass this curtain, a stage appears on which the exhibits, dubbed Shadows by Mazzei, are positioned. In this setting, her sculptures, consisting of white and black linen panels on wire frames, serve both as actors and backdrops for a »silent drama.« Although they have an abstract form, they are reminiscent of faces, figures, or outstretched legs - but in the next moment this view dissolves again. Mazzei takes up the uncertainty about one's own perception from the Italian Futurist Anton Giulio Bragaglia. His goal was to turn away from the static image and capture life in flux.
The Brazilian artist's exhibited sculptures were all created in 2021, but her concept is not new: With her work Corpo Parede (2018), she already created the idea of acrobatic figures using strips of wood in front of a blue wall, and she also demonstrated her penchant for stage-like staging with Drama O'Rama: Other Scenes (2021), a sculpture made of wooden blocks arranged in a semicircle, at the Glasgow International Festival in Scotland in June. In The Sleepwalk, her Shadows are also flanked onstage by wall sculptures, her mind maps, made of wooden blocks, as is typical of Mazzei. The Sleepwalk deconstructs reality similarly to dreams and restages life after awakening. The exhibition can be walked through until January 8, 2022 at the Green Art Gallery in Dubai.
