Two artists are investigating dreams and dreaming at the Belgo: Sarah Fuller‘s exhibition Dream Lab at Les Territoires and Dustyn Lucas‘ show La vie en rêves at Galerie A. B.

Sarah Fuller takes the clinical approach. In collaboration with the Dream and Nightmare laboratory at the Sacred Heart Hospital in Montreal, she explored the first onset of sleep, also referred to as the hypnagogic stage. According to the Surrealists, this is the phase of sleep which produces the most creative imagery. Salvador Dali is said to have conducted experiments to access this dream state. Fuller stepped into the painter’s footsteps and set up an experiment which allowed her to record her own hypnagogic stage. At the sleep lab she was wired up  with an EEG and allowed to fall asleep upright in a chair. After 4 – 5 seconds of hypnagogic sleep the researchers of the lab would wake her up, triggering a shutter release cable and photographic flash. The resulting self portraits are displayed at the gallery, but sadly the artist kept her dreams to herself.

If you are curious to see an artist’s dreams, I suggest you check out Dustyn Lucas’ exhibition La vie en rêves. Lucas practices lucid dreaming and keeps a sketchbook next to his bed. The imagery he captures is filled with animals and deceptive portraits. In Lucas’ remarkable paintings not all is what it seems: faces turn into figures, animals morph into each other, prey turns into predator. The works seem to come from another age. The alabaster-skinned maidens and carefully rendered animal pelts, the dew drop on the red-faced rose all echo a late-renaissance painterly aesthetic.

Two artists, two very different perspective. But what they have in common is a fascination with the point where we surrender ourselves to our subconscious, let go of logic, and let ourselves fall — fall asleep.

Les Territoires, space 527
Sarah Fuller
Dream Lab
October 14 – 29, 2011
www.lesterritoires.org

Galerie A. B., space 313
Dustyn Lucas
La vie en rêve
October 19 – November 5, 2011
www.galerieab.com