Para-Real

Para-Real puts together seven pairs of artists whose works—all in distinctly different ways—destabilize the notion of reality through models, illusions, fakes, virtual constructs, appropriation, dioramas, puppets, re-made objects and paranormal phenomena, staged or real.

Model environment

Thomas Demand – Jennifer and Kevin McCoy

Household items

Jim Hodges – Robert Therrien

Virtual reality

Eva and Franco Mattes – Shamus Clisset

Is this a real Richter?

Vik Muniz – Greg Allen

Smaller than life

Maurizio Cattelan – Sally Smart

Natural history

Hiroshi Sugimoto – Adam Cvijanovic

Smoke and mirrors

Trevor Paglen – Melissa Dubbin and Aaron S. Davidson

“Because memory and sensations are so uncertain, so biased, we always rely on a certain reality—call it an alternate reality—to prove the reality of events. To what extent facts we recognize as such really are as they seem, and to what extent these are facts merely because we label them as such, is an impossible distinction to draw. Therefore, in order to pin down reality as reality, we need another reality to relativize the first. Yet that other reality requires a third reality to serve as its grounding. An endless chain is created within our consciousness, and it is the very maintenance of this chain that produces the sensation that we are actually here, that we ourselves exist.”

- Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”

- Albert Einstein

“Reality: What a concept!”

- Robin Williams

“It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.”

- Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“Did you ever wonder if the person in the puddle is real, and you're just a reflection of him?”

- Calvin and Hobbes

Curated by Magdalena Sawon for 601Artspace

Magdalena Sawon is a co-owner/director (with Tamas Banovich) of Postmasters Gallery, founded in 1984. Over the course of the gallery’s nearly 30-year history, she has organized over 200 exhibitions. www.postmastersart.com