Ghost of a Dream

Ghost of a Dream, the collaborative team of Lauren Was and Adam Eckstrom, creates sculptures and installations that embody the essence of opulence while being constructed of materials that typically end up in the trash. The artists mine popular culture searching for discarded materials that people use trying to reach their goals. Whether it is a romance novel someone reads in order to enter a dream reality, a religious tract promising the glory of eternal life, or a lottery ticket that gives the possibility of a future full of rich decadence, they use these remnants to re-create peopleʼs dreams.

Forever, Almost (2012), is a monumental collage of thousands of discarded lottery tickets woven together in a diamond pattern reminiscent of a Persian rug. Each ticket, a symbol of dashed hopes, builds upon one another to suggest an infinite repetition of disappointment. Alas, when intertwined, they pulsate with a colorful energy as seductive as the tickets’ underlying get-rich-quick scheme. This work particularly relates to their adopted moniker, explaining, “The reason we call ourselves Ghost of a Dream is that we make everything out of the ephemera created from people trying to attain their hopes and dreams—usually in a too-quick method.”

Ghost of a Dream’s work has been shown in solo exhibitions at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center, Hunterdon Art Museum in Clinton, New Jersey, Galleri Christoffer Egelund in Copenhagen, Art First in Bologna, and the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Grand Rabis, among many others. They have been awarded a Pollock-Krasner, a NYFA, a Joan Mitchell and a Jorome Fondation Grant.

Courtesy of the artist