While You Were Sleeping
WIM LEGRAND
29.08–28.09.2024
Kalashnikovv Gallery | Cape Town
23h00: The lights dimmed; the curtains lifted.
23h30: The game ramped up; the internet went down.
23h31: Someone, somewhere made a pretty penny.
23h59: He tapped at the window, then he cried through the lock.
00h15: There was a false alarm, then an awkward silence.
01h05: The bedroom mirror made funny faces. (Funny ha-ha and funny strange.)
01h15: You breathed out.
01h16: You breathed in.
01h25: You laughed out loud with your eyes tight shut.
01h30–02h00: The Night Surfer and the Patrol Officer completed their missions: location secured.
02h00–04h00: The power went out; the phone kept buzzing.
03h40: Remember you will die. But also remember you have an early meeting tomorrow.
03h55: You used 4.8 Gb of data.
04h08: You gained 14 followers.
04h45: The inside joke disarmed the outside lurker.
While you were sleeping describes the stuff of funny dreams – funny ha-ha and funny strange, dreams both unconscious and lucid – of events and encounters unfolding in the moments between waking and sleeping, between online and (never really) offline.
Within the uncertain hours and uncertain dimensions of a twilight stage, familiar, forgettable objects assemble – or disassemble – in varying states of predicament and vitality, in delicious disarrays of misplaced punchlines.
Artworks function like tragicomic tableaus discovered under the bed and in the closet, hiding behind the door, frozen under the streetlamp. These are still-lifes of a sort, comprising lifeless unicorns, fabricated flowers, goofy grins hiding sharp teeth, piquant tigers, sausages and stalks, an assortment of tubes of non-descript function; all rendered in sweet hues and marshmallow pastels.
With objects on edge, pierced, dazed; things decapitated, things defiant; they are reminiscent of vanitas paintings, but mortality is questionable and meaning ambiguous. They send out mixed signals, telling open-ended stories and awkward jokes, even providing sanctuary for private thoughts.
