Radka Salcmannova
REALITIES
The artists chosen to represent this first issue of Psychology Tomorrow challenge our conventional ways of visualizing reality by placing figures and objects in flight or motion or in surprising places where they typically would not exist – a floating body beautifully wrapped in cloth, a fancifully dressed bear holding a light at what seems like the edge of the world, a dimly lit house dropping from the sky, in which quantum theory, the laws of physics are broken and traditional notions of time don’t exist
Like the written words in the magazine, nothing is what it seems. Every image is unpredictable and mysterious, a paradox of associations, yet each still possess its own internal truth. When we look at them, our tendency is to try to make sense, but there are no reference in our experiences that we can rely on to explain what we see.
Each image demands an emotional response as well. What do we feel when we see what appears to be a dead body under the sheets of an elegantly dressed bed? How do we react to a televised image of Christ’s face on a large wooden cross? Are we angered, frightened or amused? The emotions these images evoke, provide clues into the mysteries of our subconscious.
The beauty of these images is not in how pretty they are, though they may be, but in how they force us to confront ourselves — what we see, what we perceive, what we feel, where our reactions come from. Although images are paired with specific text, they are not necessarily meant to illustrate, but instead to continue to provoke. Our hope is that you truly look at them with an open your mind and like the articles within, they encourage you to create previously unimagined narratives.
Radka Salcmannova,
Artist/Curator