RETREAT SYNDROME

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RETREAT SYNDROME
AN EXHIBITION IN CALIFORNIA

The title of the exhibition takes its name from a short story by Philip K Dick. The narrative follows a man who is found speeding in the desert, he believes he is having a drug-induced hallucination whereby he is actually at home on his planet Ganymede in jail for killing his wife. After not finding any evidence of drug abuse, the police let the man go so he can search for his wife, proving that he was not in the real world. He arrives at the house and finds his wife, whom he then kills. He is admitted to a psychiatrist who assures him that he is in the real world, so to test it, the man once again returns to his wife's home to find that she is still very much alive. So there is definitely this questioning of reality that I have been interested in for a while, and different levels of reality. I wanted to attribute both the 'coming of age' story which was quite relevant to me at the time, and performative aspects of the specific part of California I was in, with this multiple reality question.