Fruta prohibida / Forbidden fruit Print

For almost forty years I have dedicated myself to combining objective, dreams and surrealistic reality through collages, shadow boxes and kaleidoscopes . Collages have a dreamlike essence which completely disregard logical principles, as all surreal creations do. In the waking life 2 plus 2 equals 4. In dreams, 2 plus 2 could well result in red alligators atop underwater polka dots clouds, and so ad infinitum. Shadow Boxes have been defined as a box to keep dreams. Dreams form the other half of our lives that we, unconsciously, live when our experiences are arbitrarily represented with our senses only while we are dreaming. Dreams already appeared in writing circa 5000/6000 years ago in the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. A magnificent example of surrealism is the stream of consciousness writing in the last 25 pages of Joyce's Ulysses: there are no punctuation signs whatsoever in there, just as it happens with our mental processes. They are not hampered by any punctuation, they just occur, even smells, voices, songs, cries, fear, love and all the human and not so human utterances. I have also been a Cultural History professor for three decades. What's relevant about cultural history, dreams and reality? They are all inextricably linked in surrealistic images. There are no punctuation marks, no paragraphs separating a renaissance soldier from a NBA player or a Petra column from a Manhattan skyscraper or a horse's nose. It's all part of human experience and our mind can integrate them, rather easily. *