GIJON.- Passages. Travels in Hyperspace is an exhibition drawn from the collection of Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary that is conceived as a stroll, an excursion through an interior landscape of sorts. Rather than projecting a linear course through the space, this wandering fosters a contemplative state of consciousness and enriches the experience of each work as well as of the exhibition as a whole.

Coined by the American cultural critic Fredric Jameson, the term hyperspace describes a new spatial typology, producing perceptual and sensory shifts that affect the eyes and body. Public space, for instance, is usually arranged according to specific rules so as to enable a sense of orientation informed by convention. Changing those rules by reorganizing the space prompts a need to readjust and in turn fosters a heightened state of awareness, a feeling of being out of space, disoriented, and possibly open to experiences that alter our understanding or perception. We hope that visitors will allow themselves to enter the destabilizing spatio-temporal dimensions of contemporary art, to access its transformative qualities.

For the first time, LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial presents an exhibition without any display elements other than the architecture of the space itself. The resulting open plan is meant to reinforce the nonlinearity of the show and to enhance the dialogue between the works on view, as well as with the space they occupy.

Each of the works presented in the exhibition was chosen for its capacity to provoke reflection on the way we relate to the world that surrounds us. These works prompt us to question our sense of reality, our spontaneous reflex to rely essentially upon the observation of the world to comprehend it, without taking into account numerous parameters that may altogether challenge that notion. Both individually and as a whole, those artworks suggest a new grid for understanding and relating to our environment; they take us into a narrative dimension that freely associates reality and fiction. Walking out of the exhibition, back into “reality,” visitors may experience new sensations, wherein the familiar may look peculiar and therefore trigger a richer perception of our daily environment.