The second dimension: Multifaceted pictures of reality that does not exist

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Drawing inspiration from the natural environment of California and old Victorian houses, combining many disparate parts, the artist (Lacey Bryant) creates surreal narrative paintings with out-of-date elements that are often confusing. She uses repetitive motives to portray the contrast between moments such as connection and isolation, decay and growth, life and death, good and evil.

Lacey creates a ubiquitous atmosphere of both nostalgia and alienation, and she also lifts a secret veil into the world of the unknown and hitherto unknown. Taking into account the fact that many viewers, studying the images, are lost in conjecture, trying to find that peculiar discrepancy between the visible and invisible faces lying on the surface and beyond, she deftly withstands the intrigue to the very end, constantly interweaving new elements.

In her works such plots come to life, which simply, with all the desire, do not lend themselves to logic. An old boat thrown ashore, an aquarium with a goldfish, mittens, a scarlet ribbon, a pair of simple pencils, girls who fell into a kind of despair, a flood with old chairs and other furniture, crows who flocked in the rain for tea, children playing on the rails - each from these small stories at the same time put together, immediately falling apart into pieces of a shabby, once previously sorted out puzzle.

As you may have noticed, there are common elements in the author's work that connect episodes with each other: grassy fields, spiral staircases that seem to lead nowhere, sunken or scattered objects, apparently, are often used as significant figurative connections between past and present, dream and reality. They form a separate rich composition, one way or another repeating in a new plot, as if a pattern, without which the created shaky illusion would not hold, and collapsed under the sand castle underfoot.

But female images, characteristically differing not only in age, but also in shape, remain completely unclear. Some of them embark on a surreal journey, others explore many different paths, and still others fall into despair from a certain hopelessness that has fallen on their heads. One runs across the field blindfolded, hoping to find herself or the meaning of life, the other looks thoughtfully in front of her, while the third braids her daughter's braids among the snow blockages. Bryant does everything possible to confuse the viewer, mislead, finally confusing it with a string of monotonous, but at the same time completely different visual messages, the meaning of which is right before our eyes, but only a few are able to see it.

German Johannes Müller-Franken is no less a fan of confusing the viewer with his own, looking at which, you are lost in conjecture, where is fiction, and where is reality, and which of all this is true.