Wangari Mathenga doesn’t dream the way most people do. Able to dream while awake and be awake yet dreaming, Mathenga eventually realized that her sleep patterns were atypical and, in her recent body of painting at Nicola Vassell Gallery, pictures herself between states of consciousness. Though we see her pajama’d figure lying down, the artist’s interest is in the brain in an active sleep state and her pictures emerge from data taken from the cameras she set up in her home and the dream journals she keeps. Originally intending to paint the dreams she recorded, Mathenge instead focused on her own moving figure in canvases that offer intimate insights yet picture a state of consciousness accessible only to her. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 19th).
