FRACTURED_learn_collapse_hypnagogia

“hypnagogia” was originally not a planned concept, but rather a response to a sudden, unbidden flash of imagery. A visual spark caught in the fragile threshold between waking logic and the innermost realm of... well, whatever goes on in there.

In that sense, this painting bridges into “fractured harmonies” by exploring the delicate tension that arises when mental equilibrium is disrupted. As sleep sets in, the logical order of the waking mind fractures and gives way to intrusive sensory fragments before consciousness dissipates. It is a strange moment of beautiful, visual dissonance.

But a canvas isn’t a static photograph of a fleeting moment. Over several months of sitting with this piece, the memory of that initial sensory experience deteriorates. It dissolves, adapts and subsequently rebuilds itself into an independent world.

The resulting painting is an archaeological record. What one sees is a mere surface, built atop subterranean ghost layers of shifted lines, altered expressions, quiet revisions and intuitive detours. Machines or digital tools can create instant, sterile perfection. But when art evolves through human effort - a process of friction, tension, trial and error - it captures something deeper. As for oil paintings, you get a two-dimensional surface harbouring an illusory third dimension, built from stacked time layers which ultimately becomes a four-dimensional story.

Perhaps “hypnagogia” is less about capturing a single fleeting delusion and more about the transformation that delusion undergoes through the slow, deliberate craft of giving an inner experience a permanent home. Is it even apt to call it “hypnagogia” at this point?