Welcome to my Dream

“Fantôme Fête”

Acrylic on Antique Wooden Headboard. 150 x 145 cm

By Samo Shalaby, 2022

Somewhere between right and wrong lies my latest painting “Fantôme Fête”. Part of my “Figurative Theatre” series, this drowned world explores the spiritual realm. Amongst the musical mirage veiled in midnight mist, lies a gateway to the ether, a ball with no room, a beginning with no end. An astral dream where instruments have no strings or key, and where energies collide and drift apart beneath the dead stars. A dimension that is merely a projection muffled between realms. Dance into the light with me between life and death, sleeping and waking, where everything and nothing is real.

Under the title I painted the quote “Blessed sleep to which we all return”. It’s something that stuck with me after reading it on a headstone years ago. This painting was originally meant to be on canvas, but this headboard found me first. Considering this painting came to me in a dream, a bed frame deemed to be the best surface to execute this on. The width and shape of it was perfect for the stage I had in mind. A bit rococo and baroque but naturally gothic in its bone white splendor.

“Fantôme Fête, similarly, creates a passage into another dimension. A headboard is the stage for surrealist figures, displayed on two sides. They leave space for a path, inviting the viewer to step inside and walk toward the light, into a nightmare masked as a daydream.” - Nina de Maria for Daniel Benjamin Gallery, November 2022, London UK.