For The Tears of Eros, we have invited Canadian artist Jon Rafman (1981) to add a new chapter to his Dream Journal (2016-19). In this ongoing video project, Rafman uses his own dreams and the Surrealist technique of ‘écriture automatique’: automatic writing. This is a method the surrealists used to make art from the subconcious: 'automaticly' and without thinking. Rafman applies this surrealist technique by making a note of his dreams on a daily basis. He shares them with an anonymous video animator, who converts them into moving images with the help of inexpensive CGI techniques.

When Rafman visited the Centraal Museum last year, he was immediately impressed by the Surrealist paintings of Joop Moesman in our displays of the permanent collection and decided to take Moesman’s work as the starting point for the new chapter of his Dream Journal. The result is a fragmented, delirious story in which memories, sexual fantasies and associations from the unconscious are strung together. You can watch the film by taking a seat on one of the sculptural chairs that Rafman made specially for this presentation and that he based on the iconic Rietveld chairs from the museum’s collection.

This presentation is part of The Annex, a programme of exhibitions in the last gallery in The Stables. In The Annex, we present works of art that offer a special and surprising view of the themes raised in the exhibition.

Collection in this exhibition

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To refer to this object please use the following persistent URL: https://hdl.handle.net/21.12130/exhibit.317C3DEC-CD7C-4961-B999-CA6C79033E0F

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