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Lotus Eaters
Weiss Berlin 2016
“Some will say they do not wish to dream their lives away. As if life itself were not a dream, a very real dream from which there is no awakening! We pass from one state of dream to another: from the dream of sleep to the dream of waking, from the dream of life to the dream of death. Whoever has enjoyed a good dream never complains of having wasted his time. On the contrary, he is delighted to have partaken of a reality which serves to heighten and enhance the reality of everyday.”
– Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (1957)
We are proud to present Lotus Eaters, an exhibition of sculptural works by Los Angeles-based artist Elif Erkan organized in collaboration with the Villa Aurora. Beyond the ancient myth of the lotophages who consumed the narcotic fruits and flowers of the lotus tree, this new group of works references modern figures, substances, and notions of alternative living such as Robert Bootzin; natural and chemical remedies; or Henry Miller’s memoir describing his time in Big Sur. Fictions of good life are placed in relationship to an aesthetics of apathy. Plaster casts firmly enclose material references to fictional recollections solidifying them into apparently faint gestures.Can an object suffer depression? Could it escape?