“Fantastic as it may sound, I was in full possession of my waking faculties while dreaming and soundly asleep: I
could think as clearly as ever, freely remember details of my waking life, and act deliberately upon conscious
reflection. Yet none of this diminished the vividness of my dream. Paradox or no, I was awake in my dream!”

-Stephen LaBerge, Lucid Dreaming (1986)

Jane Lombard Gallery is pleased to present Notes from a Lucid Dream, a solo exhibition of new
paintings by Canadian artist Bradley Wood. The featured works transport viewers into the lavish
domestic environment of Wood’s envisioned dreamscape, where conspicuous consumption is limited
by imagination alone. The exhibition will be on view from October 27 – December 16, with an opening
reception on Friday, October 27 from 6 – 8 PM.

Notes from a Lucid Dream displays an illusive vision of luxury that straddles desire, material wealth,
and ennui. Wood affords the voyeuristic viewer a forbidden glimpse of what he envisions to be
unfolding within the walls of society’s most palatial mansions, implying a sense of longing curiosity on
behalf of artist and audience alike. Drawing from his own dreamlike states, Wood frequently renders
the human body as composite, destabilizing distinctions between inside and outside, figure and
ground, reality and fiction; eccentric characters materialize from the drapes, march out of the walls, or
else evanesce into amorphous entities of color and fabric. In Lounging with Gloria enigmatic figures
are delineated by sensual tones and swaths of thick oil paint as they lounge languidly about their
extravagant surroundings. Engaged in the pursuit of recreational pleasure, the depicted figures seduce
viewers with their unobtainable lifestyles and apparent ease of living. Elsewhere, such as in Squeak,
furniture and fixtures blend together in a swirl of generative delirium as surreal figures are actively
spawned from the garish confusion, merging bodies with their encompassing possessions.

Referring to his paintings as “domestic fictions,” Wood enlists the depicted figures as actors to
communicate the seductive nature of wealth and the widespread desire to inhabit such spaces of
luxury. Much like characters in a play, the actors are tasked with generating an atmosphere of reality
that captures a fascination with wealth and excess but also an inexplicable associated anxiety. Indeed,
Wood’s figures are underscored by an unsettling sense of unease reminiscent of Surrealism and late
nineteenth-century Decadence, providing a visual exploration of the mind’s vulnerability to its milieu;
how do lifestyles of unconstrained material wealth signify for the denizens of such luxurious domains?
In a similar manner, Wood’s unrestrained application of oil paint, itself luscious and rich, maintains a
dialogue between formal technique and content. The pleasurable experience of applying luscious oils
to canvas is at once sensual and abject, treading a fine line between buttery seduction and muddy
chaos.

Wood’s canvases are ultimately an amalgamation of fragments of memories, dreams, and encounters
that are recombined and translated through his distinctive vision and technical skill. The paintings
sustain a tension between the post-Modern and the opulence and paint application of 17th Century
still-life paintings, late-18th Century Rococo artists, French Baroque and early Modernist German
Expressionists. Wood cites the technical handling of French painter ChaÏm Soutine as the inspiration
behind his interest in exploring the transformative properties of oil paint and its capacity to stimulate
a visceral response. His resulting dreamscapes occupy the delicate space between quiet luxury and
aspirational excess, providing an exploratory inquiry into humanity’s complex and conflicting
relationship with material wealth.