Javier Perez - Somnia in Somnia

Somnia in Somnia is undoubtedly one of the most accomplished artistic endeavours to address the ocean of darkness that is our dreams and nightmares. 

Somnia in Somnia is presented as a unique artist's book, drawing its narrative form from a strict protocol laid down by the artist. Plunged into a period of turmoil that saw him drifting off every night, Javier Perez decided to archive the tangible traces of his nightmares, namely the pillows that carry in their folds the violence of what he had been through. That is to say 7 pillows, 7 nights, 7 moments specifying the antics of an unchained unconscious. Scanned and then reproduced with extraordinary accuracy in white Italian marble, his pillows constituted a cycle of sculptures that the artist then photographed. Each pillow/sculpture is then transformed into a subjective image of his nocturnal drifts. The book begins with seven photographs soberly presented on the black of an endless night.

In a second phase, Javier Perez pursues this exploration through a series of black and white drawings giving form to what usually has none. Unmade beds transformed into an impetuous flood, a twilight sea of clouds under a pallid moon, a pillow gathering in its bosom a lake of scattered memories, a fragile silhouette caught in a whirlwind of fragments of life, a network of sprawling roots, an absent body sinking into the troubled waters of the Styx, pleated sheets becoming dunes, a desert... The whole thing ends with a liberation: the contemplation of the sun, a celestial object that both blinds us and delivers us by bringing life. Composed especially for this occasion, the text by the Spanish poet Miguel Angel Hernández completes this crossing of the unspeakable.

Imagined by the artist during the autumn of 2020, Somnia in Somnia is an edition of 100 numbered and signed copies. Printed in silkscreen on 150 and 115 gr. black Sirio paper, in a 38 x 28 cm format and in a luxurious box, this 50-page work is the only artist's book produced to date by the Spanish artist.