Alexandra Gibson uses her images as a pathway to further the deepest human concepts about the afterlife, spirituality, and ones’s evolution. Gibson will exhibit The Collective Dream for two months at Silencio, the private club conceived by David Lynch and dedicated to creative communities. Located in the heart of historic Paris, 142 rue de Montmartre is steeped in history. Built in 1883 by the architect Ferdinand Bal, the building was used by publishing houses for over a century, successively home to leftwing newspapers La France, L’Humanité, and L’Aurore.
Alexandra Gibson is a photographer with a background in both art photography and journalism. Her images carry a strong sense of personal and editorial narrative with an eye for the surreal. Her most current style represents a cross-fertilization of social realism, erotica, and concepts of spirituality. With ten years of darkroom and printing experience, Gibson marries the traditions of the photographic art to the digital. For the past 8 years Gibson has traveled to 20 countries photographing her current series The Collective Dream.
The Collective Dream builds on Gibson’s previous body of work, her Slaughterhouse Series, which expanded themes of consumption, reality, sexuality, and death. Gibson’s father’s passing ignited her to explore “the collective dream we are all having.” She uses her images as a pathway to further the deepest human concepts about the afterlife, spirituality, and one’s evolution. “It was life changing to lose both of my parents in my 20s. I was personally transformed on a spiritual level and had to really take a look at the meaning of life, to consider if the soul exists, and to examine my beliefs of the spiritual conscience realms. This series has been a 10 year in depth artistic meditation on these ideas.” Her intuitive version of characters and curated organic settings allow the viewer to dissolve into their own nothingness. As Gibson explains “it’s important to embrace our own darkness in order to be able to appreciate our light.”
Alexandra Gibson will adorn Silencio with her provocative visual experience for two months. The Collective Dream exhibition caresses the walls on five out of six levels in the private venue. This exploration of self begian February 5th with doors open to Silencio members only from 6pm-11pm. Public is welcome from 11pm to closing time.
“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person,” wrote Oscar Wilde in “The Critic as Artist” (1891). “Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” This proverb finds its deepest meaning in Alexandra Gibson’s fascinating anonymous series. Sometimes seductive, often frightening, always enigmatic, deeply sensual and mysterious, her masked characters whisper a new sort of truth. These black and white photographs are at the same time light and dark, funny and tragic. They move the viewer in so many directions that it is impossible to reduce their power with simple worlds. The artist talks about a “collective dream.” Indeed, as art itself was created in the Greek Tragedy, those masks bring us somewhere else : in a dream-world where everything is possible, and everybody can become a character, an artist.”
-Yann Perreau, Art Critic
Alexandra Gibson – The Collective Dream
February 5th – March 30th 2019
