“Some dreams tell us what we wish to believe. Some dreams tell us what we fear. Some dreams reveal what we know, though we may not know it. The rarest dream is the dream that tells us what we did not know.” – URSULA K. LE GUIN, “THE LATHE OF HEAVEN”, 1971.
A Surreality features the latest creations of Detroit-based artist and designer Chris Schanck, whose work reveals a collection of fantastic objects, sculptures, and furnishings that explore the expansive nature of science fiction, myth, and fantasy in crafting our reality. Located in MOCAD’s Woodward Gallery, a former auto showroom, A Surreality mirrors the nostalgic allure of 19th-century display techniques through an aesthetic guise of mythical and otherworldly motifs. An avid consumer of science fiction, Schanck’s distinctive design practice prioritizes imagination over functionality and celebrates the transformative power of extraordinary experiences and otherworldly narratives. Works are presented as imagined relics from the artist’s dreamscapes or sur-reality—a term coined by André Breton, the French writer and co-founder of the Surrealist movement, and defined as a space where artists create fantastical visions through irrational or unnatural combinations and juxtapositions.
This exhibition is anchored in the genre of speculative science fiction, a cultural platform that serves as a lens to explore philosophical, ethical, and cultural issues often set in an alternative reality that challenges our understanding of the current world. As a creator of visual science fiction, Schanck combines materials from the home with pop culture references to make objects that are simultaneously familiar and strange, like something out of a dream. These objects act as passive storytellers, serving as an inanimate archive for the characteristics of those who share space with them. They aim to conjure memories of moments and feelings that transcend various realities.
The selection of works presented in A Surreality illustrates Schanck’s Alufoil technique, which uses aluminum foil to cover industrial and discarded materials and then seals them with resin. This affordable material repurposes obsolete objects and changes their temporal context from past to future. In the spirit of semiotic design, as theorized by architect Robert Venturi, Schanck’s work imbues his designs with multiple layers of meaning, transforming each object into a vessel for discourse. His work contributes to the lexicon of craft practices, where objects, sculptures, and installations create undefinable and amorphous experiences.
This presentation considers the city of Detroit as a site of dreams, recalling the iconic science fiction novel “The Lathe of Heaven” by Ursula K. Le Guin. Set in a dystopian future, Le Guin’s text follows a man whose dreams can alter reality and explores themes of power, ethics, and the consequences of trying to define reality. In A Surreality, Schanck positions Detroit as his dreamscape home—a site of resilience where various communities fantasize together in various shapes, sizes, and colors. Some dreams come true; some are more complicated and harder to untangle and is a space where the logical and illogical exist simultaneously. Shimmering coffee tables, mirrors, tables, light fixtures, and ethereal chairs transport you to another dimension, sparkling and shimmering to underline the blurry nature of experience from science fiction to fantasy, creating a new reality.
