in my dreams...

Super cool new show, Sometimes in My Dreams I Fly, by Andrea Dezso in Houston. If you are lucky enough to be in Texas you should stop by and see this installation which sounds so cool!


The press release reveals some fascinating facts about her past and work- it states:

Growing up, Andrea Dezsö was obsessed with space travel. Dezsö explains, “There was always this idea of a possible escape place, and because we did not have passports and could not go anywhere in Communist Romania, travel was only possible in your mind. What captured my imagination was how not being able to go somewhere physically opens the possibility of epic mental Odysseys, and how we can stuff empty space with rich imaginary worlds, then move in.”

For her installation Sometimes in My Dreams I Fly, Dezsö will expand upon a technique she uses to make her distinctive “tunnel books.” Small, handmade books that reveal three-dimensional scenes, tunnel books are created from layers of paper that are individually drawn, cut out, and painted. Each layer is then stacked one in front of another in a collapsible case to create a miniature world with depth and detail that draw in the viewer. At Rice Gallery, Dezsö’s tunnel books will become life-size, with tunnels as wide as six feet. The individual “tunnels” will be placed just behind Rice Gallery’s large front glass wall, creating portals a viewer can peer into but enter only with their imagination. The human scale will be a departure point to another reality. Explains Dezsö, “I want to transport the viewer, as when you pass by a house and look into a window and see a different world from your own.”

Much of Dezsö’s work refers to, as she puts it, a “childhood, which never entirely went away.” An ethnic Hungarian, who grew up in Transylvania, Romania, Dezsö describes most of her childhood memories as “quite sweet,” despite shortages of medicine and food, censorship, and ethnic discrimination. Books were very important to her. She says, “We didn’t have access to contemporary publications so we read the classics. We lived in books. Travelled through them.” Her installation at Rice Gallery will be her first site-specific installation.

Rice University Art Gallery.