Exhibition dates: 6 October — December 2020
Frieze Art Fair viewing rooms, 9 — 16 October
The directors of Colnaghi, London, are proud to announce Dreamsongs: from Medicine to Demons to Artificial Intelligence, a group exhibition which examines the way dreams have been depicted in art from Antiquity to the present day.
Curated by Bjorn Stern, the presentation is comprised of more than forty paintings, drawings, sculptures and multi-media works by a diverse range of artists, including Jan van Wechelen, Frederick Charles Underhill, Takis, Salvador Dali, Albrecht Dürer and Max Ernst.
The arrangement of the show will loosely fall into the five categories of the dream identified by the Latin scholar Macrobius in response to Cicero’s poem: insomnium, visium, somnium, oraculum and visio. Adds Stern: ‘The exhibition also features stone carvings, vases, porcelains, clocks, books and multimedia works. In choosing these and other objects, I am seeking to break away from chronology or a stylistic hierarchy, to let the experience of entering the exhibition be akin to entering a dream sequence. To this end, the works are arranged in conversation, while stylistically they may clash, with the aim of offering new perspectives and teasing out fresh interpretations.’
Continues Stern: ‘As knowledge in our time has become worthless and accessible at all times by all, the transference of knowledge to wisdom has also taken new paths - much in the same way a brain would compensate for any damage, or a newly added tool that forms new synapses and connections, we arrive at our present. Where much of the ordinary thinking processes are handed over to artificial intelligences, so does the machine also begin to dream. Not in the human sense, but perhaps in the humanist sense.’
Says Colnaghi CEO Jorge Coll. ‘We are delighted to be working with Bjorn on this show. His drawing together of works from different periods of art history uncover the way artists have interpreted the dream in an insightful and thought-provoking way.’
An iteration of Dreamsongs will be displayed simultaneously at the gallery’s virtual stand at Frieze Masters online from 9 — 16 October.
Artists: Reza Aramesh, Shuvinai Ashoona, Bill Barrett, Jennifer Bartlett, Barton Lidice Beneš, Vilhelm Bjerke-Petersen, William Blake, Peter Blake, Rudolphe Bresdin, Anne Brigman, Glenn Brown, William Burroughs, Alexander Calder, Jean Joseph Carriès, Monster Chetwynd, Eduardo Chillida, Jean Cocteau, Joseph Cornell, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Salvador Dalí, Raymond Daussy, Konstantino Dregos, Evelyn Dunbar, Albrecht Dürer, Max Ernst, Luis Feito, John Anster Fitzgerald, Jean-Louis Forain, Tsuguharu Foujita, Henry Fuseli, Francisco Goya, Thomas Heatherley, Rita Kernn-Larsen, Mario Klingemann, Guillermo Kuitca, Juan Leal De Valdes, René Magritte, Marcel Mariën, John Martin, André Masson, Master of Frankfurt, Roberto Matta, Jillian Mayer, Reuben Mednikoff, Luc Olivier Merson, Jean-François Millet, John Minton, Joan Miró, Estrid Lutz & Émile Mold, Pierre Molinier, Tadeusz Myslowski, John George Naish, Godwin Champs Namuyimba, Pedro Nunez Del Valle, Amédée Ozenfant, Grace Pailthorpe, Samuel Palmer, Savinien Petit, Odilon Redon, John Robinson, Salvator Rosa, Henri Rousseau, Walter Sauer, Hiraki Sawa, Jan Schoolmeesters, Mark Seidenfeld, Luigi Serafini, Raqib Shaw, Smack, James Smetham, Kiki Smith, Annegret Soltau, Henry John Stock, Graham Sutherland, Takis, Dorothea Tanning, Antonio Tàpies, Jean Tingueli & Eva Aeppli, Jan Toorop, James Turrell, Frederick Charles Underhill, Andy Warhol, Adolfo Wildt, Hugo Wilson, Otto Wols, Hermann Wöhler, Adolf Wölfli, Joos van Cleve, Jan van Wechelen, Cajsa von Zeipel, Jakub Julian Ziolkowski; and others.
For press information please contact Albany Arts Communications:
Carla von der Becke
carla@albanyartscommunications.com
t: +44 (0) 20 78 79 88 95; m: + 44 (0) 79 74 25 29 94
Michelle Allen
michelle@albanyartscommunications.com
t: +44 (0) 20 78 79 88 95; m: + 44 (0) 79 22 80 72 39
Notes to Editors:
About Colnaghi Gallery
Founded in 1760, Colnaghi is one of the oldest commercial art galleries in the world with an unmatched history. From the late nineteenth century, Colnaghi became the leading dealership of Old Master paintings, selling masterpieces to the greatest collectors and museums of the gilded age. The only major commercial gallery to specialise in artworks from antiquity through to the modern era, Colnaghi handles unique objects from the Ancient World, the finest Old Masters and Modern masterpieces. With galleries and experts in London, New York, and Madrid, Colnaghi is able to offer an unparalleled service and programme of exhibitions and events.
Colnaghi’s exhibitions showcase the finest Old Masters, Ancient and Modern works of art in the world. Past exhibitions have included a temporary gallery space in Venice for the 58th Biennale, which merged the spirit of the Grand Tour with the desires of the 21st-century traveller. Colnaghi London’s past exhibitions have presented opportunities to cross collect from an array of diverse categories. Forthcoming shows in London and New York will offer a superb breadth of paintings, drawings, sculpture and ancient works of art, telling the stories of exquisite and rare art and objects from across the globe. The gallery was acquired by Jorge Coll and Nicolas Cortés in 2015 when it merged with the gallery they founded in 2005, Coll & Cortés (Cortés left the company in 2018). Last year, Victoria Golembiovskaya, the founder of the art consultancy House of the Nobleman, joined the company as a Director.
About Bjorn Stern
Bjorn Stern is a London and Brussels based art historian and independent art advisor. His previous exhibitions include, La Bella Figura, on 20th century Italian art and politics. In-Significant’s, an exhibition in Malmo, Sweden in 1998 that accurately predicted the emergence of what was later to be coined “post-Internet art”. More recently Stern has curated shows in Spain and New York on identity politics and art making in the time of sharing economies and social media.
Colnaghi, London
26 Bury Street, London SW1Y 6AL
Contact t. +44 20 7491 7408, or email, contact@colnaghi.com
Due to the Covid-19 restrictions, the gallery is by appointment only.
Instagram: @Colnaghi1760
Facebook: @Colnaghi1760
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