Brooke Johannesen, Graham Krenz and Bernd Oppl: The Moment Perception Begins to Slip

GHOSTMACHINE Gallery is pleased to present The Moment Perception Begins to Slip, an exhibition of works by Brooke Johannesen, Graham Krenz and Bernd Oppl curated by Magdalena Dukiewicz.

There is a moment when reality begins to feel slightly wrong. Not enough to become a dream, and not enough to become a nightmare, but enough to make us question what we are looking at. A body is recognizable, yet its proportions no longer make sense. An object behaves in a way it shouldn’t. Something familiar becomes absurd, grotesque, or strangely alive.

The works in this exhibition occupy an unstable space between reality and perception. They take recognizable forms and disrupt their logic, creating a world that feels simultaneously familiar and impossible. Bodies stretch, transform, mutate, and resist categorization. The ordinary becomes strange, sometimes humorous, sometimes unsettling, and often both at once. The grotesque does not necessarily frighten us. Sometimes it makes us laugh. Sometimes it makes us uncomfortable. Sometimes we cannot decide which response comes first.

The viewer is drawn into this uncertainty, navigating a world where the boundary between the external and the interior becomes porous. Perception begins to slip. What we see may be real, imagined, remembered, transformed, or simply impossible. There is no clear moment when reality breaks apart. It remains recognizable, but something has shifted. Reality has not disappeared, but it can no longer be trusted.