HOKUSPOKUS

CURATED BY

Caro Mantke, Jorge Chamorro, Anelor Robin

HOKUSPOKUS

an exhibition about illusion, mirage and other phenomena

“There Is No Truth. There Is Only Perception.” – Gustave Flaubert

It’s hot. It’s steamy. You’re not really sure where you are. You’re not sure about the sounds you’re hearing. The information that you discern seems misstated. Are you delusional? Are you victim of hallucination? Your vision is blurred and you’re not really sure what you’re seeing. Is that a giraffe standing at the bar or just the legs of a stool? You’re not really sure of anything anymore. At the bar, you pick a strawberry but the flavor seems to be more pungent than fruity. Is this a scientific conference or just a prank? Is that the artist? Really? Is that the artist you’re seeing or just a hologram he sent for the opening? Images shimmer like mirages in front of your eyes. A drop of sweat drips from your cheek and an ambiguous smile sets shape on your face. Yes that’s right, you have reached the entrance to Hokuspokus. An endless room of crooked mirrors. Dream or reality? Illusion or truth? This is a shadowy place, where there is no such thing as objectivity, and your own eyes are not to be trusted.

Hokuspokus invites you to enter an artistic chimera whose works call on you to squint, peek, blink, and otherwise contort your vision. What is a dream if not a collage of different realities, contexts, and objects which together make no apparent sense. We conceive this exhibition as a menagerie of visual traps, filled with artworks that challenge our perceptions and make us question the supposed truth in what we see, and to therefore consider the possibility of multiple realities. We want to give an enchantment, a counterpart to reality and an invitation to open your third eye. Things previously unknown to you will appear to reveal themselves in an epiphany. We oppose illusion and truth – the illusion masks the truth, and stops us from seeing things as they are. But maybe we should consider the illusion or the dream as a path to the veracity. This exhibition endeavors to present all known possible evidence as to what an illusion can be, from an imperfection of the senses, to an optical trick or magical phenomena.

Photo by @guillaume.guerin.artist