When the GUM Gallery opened Mikael Sandblom’s showThe Internal Universe from April 30 to May 29, the exhibition helped establish the tone of Meaford’s newest experimental arts space. The exhibition invited viewers into a shifting terrain between perception and imagination, where familiar forms dissolved into layered visual experiences that seemed to change with time and attention. In keeping with GUM’s conceptual, curiosity-driven ethos, The Internal Universe asked visitors not simply to look at art, but to notice the strange and deeply human act of seeing itself.
We’re looking out a window. The sun has recently set and illuminates the sky from beyond the horizon. Glass that has been invisibly transparent starts to reflect the interior. At first, shadows and outlines are visible, then as the sky darkens, the outside disappears, and the window shows only a dark mirror world of the interior.
‘Mirror / Window’ is a piece that plays with the idea of perception and reflection. The ghostly images of buildings that appear in the sky partly reflect that same sky and within the shadows, reveal their interior.
An old text describes our perception of the world as a limited view through a dark mirror. In the brightness of day, we might think our knowledge is firm; our apprehension is complete. In the twilight you start to doubt what is truly outside and what is a reflection of the inside.
We live at the bottom of an ocean of air. It’s 100 km deep. Although we can’t feel it, this ocean is pressing down with 1 kg of weight on every square cm of the earth. This invisible ocean surrounds us. It protects and sustains us. The clouds in this image may be between 5 and 10 km above the surface of the earth – far above us, but still deep down in the ocean.
The cloud outlines look like coast-lines and archipelagos. The act of mapping and diagramming is analogous to how we navigate and make sense of the world. In this image, there is a small ‘lens’ through which we see the clouds in full detail. The remaining peripheral area is filled with partial abstractions. These areas represent how we fill in our limited perception with ideas and constructs. To ‘make sense’ of the world, one inevitably must resort to over-simplifying it.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was a pioneer aviator and is best known as the author if ‘The Little Prince’. The life of a pilot was dangerous and Saint-Exupéry had several close calls. Engines were temperamental; navigation instruments and radios were primitive and unreliable.
It was Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s experience of surviving a crash in the Sahara desert that was the inspiration for the encounter with the Little Prince. The text in this image is an excerpt from the story wherein the prince recounts a visit with the sole inhabitant of a small planet: a geographer who makes maps but considers himself too important to actually visit the places he records.
In this image the clouds are sharp and clear within a small horizon around the plane. Further afield, the image breaks down into map like patterns and abstractions. Saint-Exupéry disappeared over the Mediterranean while on a reconnaissance flight to occupied France. Shown here is a Lockheed P-38, the plane he flew on this final mission. In the sea below, I’ve put a small life raft to help him out after the crash.
The sky, animated by clouds, is an endless, slow-moving drama. It’s a performance with an ambiguous, open-ended script. Clouds invite the mind to conjure wild narratives and to wander in multiple directions. My aim is not merely to portray clouds, but to re-create the experience that inspires those meandering thoughts.
Contradictory geometries materialize and dissipate, while fragments of memory intermingle with imagined structures. The art pieces embody a form of dream logic, positioning you, the viewer, as an active participant in the creative process.
Rather than represent what clouds look like, these paintings re-present what its like to look at clouds.
Allow yourself to become immersed in their geometric complexity, and remain attentive to the unexpected pathways your thoughts may explore.
A circular iris motif overlays layered skies and clouds, with vertical line patterns suggesting both water and atmospheric space. Layered forms and shifting cues create images that never fully settle, inviting you to notice your own mind at work as it constructs meaning. Digitally composed from photography, illustration, and 3D models, the image is printed on coated aluminum.
The circle in the square feels a bit like an eye or a point of focus, but it’s not perfect, it’s slightly incomplete, which matters. It suggests that seeing is never fully stable or resolved. Then you have these layers, maps, diagrams, architecture, clouds, waves, all mixed together. For me, that’s about how we experience the world through both perception and systems of understanding at the same time. So the image isn’t just something you look at, it’s also about how that act of looking is being shaped.
The Internal Universe offered viewers an opportunity to spend time with works grounded in perception, observation, and visual ambiguity. Rather than delivering a fixed interpretation, the exhibition encouraged sustained looking and personal reflection, with images that shifted depending on distance, movement, and attention. As part of GUM Gallery’s growing program, the show contributed to an ongoing effort to bring contemporary, idea-driven art into conversation within Meaford.
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