`Tales from Darkness' curated by Leandre D'Souza - Exhibition opening on 27 March 2015 at Sunaparanta

The incubus has been used as a recurrent motif in arts practice, often as a distorted reflection of our political and cultural realities. Tales from Darkness is a look into the horrific - individual fears, collective anxieties, universal horrors.

This exhibition stems from Alptraum (nightmare), an initiative started by Berlin-based artist Marcus Sendlinger in 2010. As part of the project, artists are asked to provide one work related to the subject. After a first exhibition in Berlin, the works travelled to South Africa, Slovenia, the United States, the United Kingdom and finally to Goa.

With new works organically added at every destination, the boundaries of this project continue to stretch. It has today grown into a nomadic collection, whose contents remain in constant flux, mirroring the deviant and unpredictable behavior of the artists’ minds they originate from.

The result is a visual jumble opening our minds to a delirious territory, infested with haunted and grotesque presences, anxious scribbles, and carnal abjections.

In its arrangement, the works take the viewer on a journey. It is an entry into a parallel dimension where the real and fictional blur and crossover. Like a horror flick with no exit, the viewer walks through an endless corridor – where external realities and internal thoughts turn fuzzy.

By insinuating this sense of uncontrolled wandering into the innermost recesses of the human mind, Tales from Darkness lures the viewer into an eerie, threatening yet seductive imagery. This mélange lays bare an intimate realm, where one’s most secret thoughts, beliefs, fantasies, fears disclose without barriers. It is a space of resistance, where the sinister, the irrational and the sensual collide and erupt with disturbing ease.