Artist Statement: Bruce Quek

Incidental Traces^(2b)

Concerning dreams, a tale is often told of the philosopher Zhuangzhi, who once wondered if he had dreamt of being a butterfly, or if a butterfly had dreamt of being Zhuangzhi. It is in this in-between space that Incidental Traces(2b) might be found, at the point of transformation which resembles both an elusive veil and an iron curtain.

The edge of change is a point of confusion; when we wake, our memory slip-slides as it attempts to recall the fading fragments of a dream - chains of events which seemed perfectly sensible are rendered suspect: a memory, hard-won, or confabulation brought upon by the effort of memory itself? Likewise, the path from wakefulness to sleep disappears along the way, unless disrupted by sleep paralysis or other hypnagogic twitches.

Of course, these borders are not addressed only to themselves; dreams do not concern dreams alone. What if these patterns, found in the relationship between dreaming and waking, could be found in other binary relations?