Phantasma – Pascal Filoda

Pascal Filoda
PHANTASMA
22.04 – 15.05.20022
Opening 22.04. 7pm

In that ephemeral instance between reality and the human consciousness are born phantasms. That liminal existence defines our concepts of Fantasy—here dance the Fair Folk, and nightmares too; all our dreams and desires. In this great Backstage, we are offered glimpses not only of phantom-spun latticeworks, but to the fragile fabric which binds together the Real.

Pascal Filoda’s first solo exhibition allows one to peer behind the structure of these building blocks, evoking not only perception but reaction, the emotion we feel, the desires shaping our views, and the ego which we place upon it. Inspired by the vastness of Caspar David Friedrich’s landscapes, the cavernous scenes Filoda de/constructs reveal a plane in flux as much as the mind, a perpetual transformation morphing between states that dominates perception, centralizing the viewer as witness.

The base of these chimerical compositions is formed of photographs, self-shot or collected by Filoda and then transmogrified through a technique usually reserved for ceramic printing. Like fragments of a half-remembered existence, the photographs are layered upon a canvas, transferring to the glue on the surface. Once the canvas is removed the print remains with imperfections, wounds which are later salved with paint to create an entirely new perspective within. This process reveals not only the vastness of a mutating existence, but also of the multitudes of truths within the fantastical itself.

During Berlin Gallery Weekend, our first opening in two years invites you to witness these truths that lie in sublimity, beyond any reason and explanation. The terrible and the beautiful, the symbolic which the mind may not grasp rationally—in that deeply intimate state, the viewer within the omnipresent center will find their own phantasm emerging as an independent truth: an utopia.