"Neptune Avenue (Overdose on Dreams)"

Siva Gallery, Zagreb, July 2024 (ghost exhibition in a ballroom of mirrors, without a single soul except my pictorial and poetic avatars)

 

As a person mesmerized by cosmos, astronomy and ancient astrology, but diving in it in fragmented particules of interest, I referenced Neptune as a planet of dreams, subconscious, instability, creativity, intuition, and most of all, altered states of mind (hallucinations, intoxication, near-death experience, dissociation, depersonalisation, derealization, dissociative fugue, memory loss, hypnagogic states, somnambulism, dream paralysis, hypnosis) and a love for a good drink or even narcotic. That cool, distant planet symbolizes escapism, frantic flight from reality, which is so painfully rough on the edges and laced with sharp teeth, like a vagina dentata. In every possible way reality has become unbearable and the Real is penetrating like a horrific pterodactylus. I am telling a story of a person reminiscent of Vivien Leigh in „Streetcar named Desire“, who famously said „I don't want reality, I want dreams“ and who always relies on the kindness of strangers, which is very risky and dangerous inclination, if not straightforward impulsive, and which I practiced through my hazardous youth. When the beaks of terrible bird of the all-devouring world peak the sidereal flesh to deep cuts and bruises, it is time to recoil in a cocoon and build imaginary world of fantasms, with equally  imaginary friends (furry, unicorn, invisible daimon for a bedtime confession, angel on the shoulder and – alas – devil on another). I dream of sugar cotton candy clouds in rainbow colors, I am losing myself in a ballroom of mirrors which are built in a strange, warped way to show myself an illusion, an idealized cinematic creature, a soft, buzzy fairy that will lick my tear and pop me a poppy dew. I hallucinate levitating neon avenues above crystal skyscrapers, car bullets flying above like exotic flower pollen, translucent snakes and jellyfish in the skies, myriads of hot urban ads that flicker like fireflies and I see a mirage in the desert, maybe even a milk and honey and coconut pool in the oasis, after I escaped an abhorrent murderer with obscure mask, thin as a skeleton, but fast as a ray of light. Also, films and horror movies are a way to gloss away from the jaws of ugly realism, to almost orgasm in the midst of being scared to death, and then to gasp loudly from relief, as if I dived out explosively from the ocean, like a volcano burst, puking lava. My self-portraits and body images are in contorted poses, suggesting ecstasy, feverish daydreaming, a bliss of transponing agony to pure pink euphoria and violet softness of the limbs and veins. I am turned into my own desire, and I transcend the flesh into the sacriledge of erotically charged holy icons. I am chewing harsh and rusty diamonds of nightmares and turn them to dreamland, sometimes leaving the blurred line between the two, with the accent on something artificial, otherworldly, fictional, fantastical, chimeric, like phantoms creeping in the victorian graveyard or water nymphs emerging from the wiggling, rippled lake. A body as an ideal is sensual and erotic, alluring and mesmerizing, it invites to its nest to lull the lost inbread creatures into its venereal symphony, and skin is sliding, hiding monsters, youthful and beautiful on the outside, but treacherous and venomous in the depths and throes of its owner – master of puppets. Of kittens underneath her crinoline. I connect spiritual and paranormal states of neptunian narcotic influence and imminent vicinity of the flesh, and the aching yearning to stitch the wounds and become hole again.