A house spins out of control in a wind storm, animals loom large in the imaginations of children, and mysterious creatures lurk in the darkness of Susan kae Grant’s shadow puppet-like photographs. For more than two decades, the artist has plumbed the mind’s eye, especially what it sees when we sleep. In the early 1990s, she even began collaborating with a researcher in a sleep laboratory at UT Southwestern Medical Center. Study and documentation of what she visualized in her own REM cycle led to phrases and vocabulary about what she dreamt that she continues to tap into for her studio work.
Forthcoming this autumn from MW Editions, Grant’s book Night Journey delves into her lifelong fascination with the realm of the unconscious. Silhouetted figures and objects seemingly float across nearly 100 vignettes that are blurry, cryptic, and stretched around the edges as if they originate from somewhere we’re unable to grasp.
“Through arresting black and white tableaux populated by fantastical creatures, animals, and children in hallucinatory settings, these photographs invite us to traverse the strangeness and chaos of breakneck contemporary life, like the dreams that inspired them,” the publisher says.
See more on the artist’s Instagram, and pre-order Night Journey on the MW Editions’ website.
