SOUR MOUSE PRESENTS
*CANDIED DAYDREAMS*
EXHIBITION FEATURING WORK BY
GILBANE PECK & MAIKO KIKUICHI
New York, NY, Sour Mouse is excited to present *CANDIED DAYDREAMS*, a month-long exhibition featuring exciting work by contemporary visual artists Gilbane Peck and Maiko Kikuichi. Through enchanting visual works featuring vibrant colors, delightfully unexpected assemblage, and fantastical imagery, this exhibition invites you to sample surrealist treats that explore the sweet, dreamy landscapes of our artists’ imaginations.
*CANDIED DAYDREAMS*
On view through Monday, July 28, 2021
Opening Reception: Thursday, July 1, 2021
Time: 7:00PM – 10:00PM
Location: Sour Mouse NYC, 110 Delancey, New York NY
About Artist Gilbane Peck
Gilbane Peck (b. 1986) is a conceptual artist with a combined focus in collage, painting, photography, mixed media assemblage, installation works, murals, and street art. Gilbane has exhibited internationally and has works in collections all over the world. He currently works out of his studio and lives in Brooklyn, NY. Gilbane has been putting his works up in the streets of NYC since 2013 and has been working out of his Brooklyn studio since 2016.
About Artist Maiko Kikuichi
Maiko Kikuchi received her B.A in Theater Arts and Fashion Design from Musashino Art University, Japan in 2008, her M.F.A in Sculpture from Pratt Institute, in 2012.
Extensive multi-faceted professional experience in the areas of Illustration, painting, drawing, collages, sculpture, animation and puppetry/performance. She presented her art works in “Crown Heights Film Festival”, group exhibition“In Time/Out of Place” at Parasol Project(NY), “NO PARKING” at Ca’d’ Oro Gallery(NY), “Unwritten stories” at HERE art center(NY), “To See or Not To Be Seen” at Hot Wood Art(NY), Online exhibition” Dear You” at Field Project (NY), “Four and twenty Black Birds” at Jamestown Art center(RI), “By Chamber 02” at CITAN (Tokyo), WWW(Tokyo) etc. She has also committed to musicians and bands for creating their music videos.
Maiko Kikuichi Artist Statement
Making “Visible Daydream” is the coherent purpose for my creation. What, then, is my daydream? I define it as my imagination world that lurking in my ordinary life. The daydream consists of the elements in my daily life so it seems familiar but also seems unusual by being twisted up somehow.
As I remember, the first time I created my daydream was at my father’s old office and I was 4 years old. My father is psycho-analyst and he had a big wooden box filled with sand and tons of miniature figures displayed on a shelf in his office room at that time. That was there for children’s therapy called “Sandplay therapy” a method by which the doctor was able to analyze a child’s unconscious thoughts by the miniature world they created with the toys on the sand landscape inside of the box. One day my father took me to his office and let me play with the sandplay while he had to work on his writing. I was so into making my little world inside of the box. Miniature figures are so varied like people, buildings, animals, vehicles, plants etc. They are all the elements of this real world but depending on how you place them or what you put next to each other, the world becomes unusual and that made me imagine all the different stories behind them. And when it was time to clean up and we had to go home, the sand world felt like it had been a dream. Since then, going to my father’s office has become one of my favorite childhood memories.
That experience influenced me not only in my creative process but also in my daily thoughts. I wake up in my bed, drink coffee, leave the house and walk along the same street to get to my studio every day. On the way, I start wondering, “When I turn right at the corner three blocks away from here, I will usually get to my studio building. Well, what if there is no studio building today? What if there is a zoo instead? What if I can’t even turn the corner because it has turned into dead end?” It’s like I feel as if I was in the world inside of the sandplay box. By that time, I arrive at the end of the third block and make a right, then find my studio building is there as usual. I feel relieved yet a little bit disappointed at same time. If I could extract this “what if” feeling of excitement and fright and put that into a bottle, I would label it “Daydreams”and start thinking of how I can share it with others.
The medium of my daydreams vary but everything consists of elements of my daily life. Sometime it’s a building I saw from a platform, people I found in the old photo album, a word from a dictionary, a plant on the street or a pattern of milk makes in my coffee in a cup. I pick those elements, and place them in my imaginary sandplay box until it starts speaking its own story. When they become collages or animations, that’s a moment of paper or screen became a window for the viewer to see the daydream through it and when they become installations or performances, I aim to involve the audience as a part of the elements of my daydream and make them feel twisted as if they are inside of my boxed world.