We sleep. Images appear in our mind’s eye. Scenes and sensations are seen, heard, felt: dreams, a creation of sleep. The unconscious speaks in symbols – as does art. Dreams and art open up transcendent spaces of healing.
Lucid Dreams engages with this universal theme, crossing boundaries of time and geography to investigate dreams in art, material culture, and new media from a multicultural perspective. It presents ancient headrests, illuminated Jewish, Islamic, and Christian manuscripts, Chinese dream stones and Japanese Zen prints together with works in a range of mediums by artists from the last three centuries, from Goya’s powerful Sleep of Reason through Surrealist visions to contemporary international and Israeli creations. All of these express humanity’s shared, never-ending desire to touch the dream and interpret it.
Celebrating the centenary of André Breton’s 1924 Manifesto of Surrealism and inspired by his Dream Object, the exhibition leads you through a long corridor to multiple “compartments” of the unconscious. These rooms echo the complexity of the human mind and the multifaceted nature of thoughts, emotions, and memories. We invite you to shift consciousness and immerse yourself in the transformative power of art.