Emily P. Dunne, Early stage of a collaborative collage on postcard sent via the USPS, likely lost
Said To be Dreaming
Curated by Chantal Soong Lee and Emily P. Dunne
July 21 - September 9, 2022
“Picasso once remarked I do not care who it is that has or does influence me as long as it is not myself.” – Gertrude Stein
Olympia is pleased to present Said To Be Dreaming, a group exhibition on the reading of poems and experience of images — featuring paintings, video, mail art, and sound. The show explores how the acts of reading and looking are themselves an art of daydreaming and meandering. The exhibition is curated by Chantal Soong Lee and Emily P. Dunne.
The exhibition asks, what does a conversation between a poet and an artist, or between two visual artists, look like? To spotlight this, selected poets provided a poem that was given to an artist who created or paired a work inspired by their experience of reading. Simultaneously, collage artist Emily P. Dunne visually dialogued with another artist in exchanges through the mail of collaging and returning until both agreed their visual haiku felt done. A year of reading and looking created hybrid languages that unfolded uniquely to each pairing of artists in the show.
Said To Be Dreaming is a kaleidoscopic presentation of conversations over time, expressing the visual-verbal reverberations generated throughout the past year. The exhibition aims to celebrate collaborative making and emphasize the practice and surprising outcomes of reading, looking, and responding. We hope this layering of languages, thoughts, and dreams of things seen, read, and heard is revealed as a gateway for inspired artmaking.
A musical piece was commissioned for the mail art and can be heard as a soundtrack through a QR code on the wall. Each poem was recorded by the poet and can be heard through a QR code next to the art object, encouraging a simultaneously sonorous looking experience. All audio can be accessed at home by visiting the exhibition's soundcloud. Said To Be Dreaming is accompanied by a book of the images and poems and is also scored by the recordings. A limited special edition includes an insert of a unique collage by Emily P. Dunne after selected words by sound artist Kiowa Hammons.
Artist x Poet
Jazmine Catasus x Michelle Xu | Magali Duzant x Kōan Brink | Anastasiya Gutnik x Robert Whitehead | Yolande Heijnen x Robert Whitehead | Simone Kearney x Remoy Philip | Sirena LaBurn x Remoy Philip | Madeleine Matsson x Ryan Paradiso | Lee Maxey x Robert Whitehead | Georgia McGovern x Paul Legault | Aliza Sternstein x Koan Anne Brink | Kako Ueda x Koan Anne Brink
Emily P. Dunne x Mail Artist
Mother Brando | A Paul Cartier | Hernease Davis | Deirdre Donohue | Magali Duzant | Aaron Krach | Michael Mandiberg | Sam Margevicius | Jonathan Noggle | Liz Sales | Clarissa Sharp | Rebecca Trawick | Kosmo Vinyl | Adam Void | Jack Walters
and Kiowa Hammons, Sound Artist
Chantal Soong Lee is an art librarian and independent curator based in Queens. She is interested in the poetics and interactions of words and images and symbols and narrative.
Emily Peterson Dunne is an artist, archivist, and librarian based in Queens, New York. She works with found materials and has a particular interest in their individual histories. Dunne returns life to lost items and found photographs by creating collages or objects that embrace their mysterious pasts. She also creates collaborative collages through the mail, with pieces continually evolving, creating an ephemeral and potentially ever-changing artwork. Her work is grounded in a collaborative ethos and an interrogation of the solidity of both authorship and ownership. She is also the founding member of the Queens CorresponDance School based on the ideas and artwork of Ray Johnson. The QCS is a growing network of visual artists collaborating through the mail.
