Il muro del sonno

The macroscopic view of things by magnifying or reproducing them as well as depriving them of acts expected to be performed on them belongs to Pascalis preferred artistic strategies. Frozen as a static object on the wall the imagination behind is transferred into a symbolic image that seems unreal, absurd, fairy-tale and poetic. For “Il muro del sonno“, the “Wall of Sleep“ of 1966, Pascali piles bed pillows to form one huge pillow. They are arranged like the bricks in a wall and, like many walls, coated in white paint. By crossing the idea of the pillow with that of the wall, Pascali links two entirely opposite fields of association. The former reminds of softness, lightness, smoothness, and horizontality, the latter stands for hardness, firmness, stoutness, and verticality. Used against its nature and blown up as a gigantic copy of itself, the pillow appears free from traditional images and daily functionalisms. Thus, what hold true for the dream holds true for the wall of sleep, too. The rules of society and the laws of physics are out of force. Things attain unproportionate significance. Anything is possible and nothing is as it seems.