DREAM: Multi-Media Works by Anja Mohn and Christiane Wetzel
by Erik LaPrade
From November 5 to December 19, 2002, the Goethe-Institut in New York exhibited a two-person exhibition of multi-media works. The theme and title of this exhibition is called "DREAM," and the artists, Anja Mohn and Christiane Wetzel recreate separate versions of their dreams using different media.
Wetzel creates or recreates her dream images on a computer. The artist details her dreams by writing them down on paper as soon as she wakes up. Next, "she reconstructs these images in three dimensions," printing them out and labeling them "proofs of another world." In the exhibition, there are seven stand-alone video screens situated on the floor, each screen presents a different image.
Mohn’s dreams are constructed with a variety of media-based materials. She incorporates photographs, recordings, cameras and televisions with computer-looped images to create images that have both material and immaterial aspects. Her installation piece, Sisters I and Sisters II presents an example of her subconscious universe.
Each picture is a large photograph of a woman’s face: both women have their eyes closed. A line of evenly spaced holes is punched across each woman’s mouth, forming a bar, like a bar of written musical notes on a composition page. This line represents a wound or maybe the representative opening of a passage to another level of dreaming. Located a foot from the photograph is an electric metronome, which ticks off a measured sound. This sound is derived from a recording the artist made of a hospital ventilator. The artist has adjusted the sound to invoke a "deep, calm breathing."
All of Mohn’s works in this show are detailed oriented. Her pieces perform particular functions that mimic a physical process and some element of the viewer’s subconscious. Overall, this artist wants to create an "ideal" interactive environment, one that draws the viewers in and momentarily surrounds them, the way jumping into a swimming pool or sitting in one’s living room can envelope us.
