Proto Gallery is pleased to announce What if you Slept, its first solo exhibition of new work by artist Catherine Haggarty, opening February 18th with a reception from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM at 66 Willow Ave., Hoboken, NJ. The exhibition will close March 16th, 2017.

What if you Slept presents a selection of recent paintings which explore a space between dreams and reality, providing an opportunity to escape the familiar through recurring characters placed in unknowable landscapes. The exhibition's title is borrowed from the 17th century poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem, 'What if you slept' in which a dreamed flower is brought back from the ether; our willingness to conjure dreams into reality is given shape and possibility.

Catherine Haggarty creates paintings that walk a line between abstraction and representation. Stylized figures emerge and hide within forms and implied space that departs them from their origins in an autobiographical narrative of lived experience. Her paintings offer us a sense of place and personhood depicting environments not nameable, yet strangely familiar. Themes of youth, love, nature, and sport are depicted in vivid colors, carrying her character's stories through memories and otherness.

What if you Slept will be on view from Saturday, February 18, 2016 to Sunday March 26, 2017 at Proto Gallery's main exhibition space at 66 Willow Ave. in the R. Neumann and Co. leather factory in Hoboken, NJ. What if you Slept is the first exhibition in a series of solo shows taking place in 2017, and represents a departure from the past three years of group exhibitions at the gallery.