Quantum Body Impressions is a collaborative performance and printmaking project by Marcos Lutyens and Francesco Siqueiros, presented at Transformative Arts Gallery and El Nopal Press in 2023. The work explores the body as a site of emotional memory and shared human experience. Through one-to-one hypnosis sessions, participants are guided to locate specific memories within the body. These memory sites are transmitted live to El Nopal Press, where Siqueiros creates corresponding monoprint impressions from a live model. The resulting works are exhibited simultaneously in both spaces, allowing audiences to witness the transformation of inner experience into physical trace. The project culminates in a limited edition of archival monoprints and a documentary video, preserving the fleeting exchange between consciousness, body, and image. Images by Hanna Yohannes and Marcos Lutyens. “La visite imaginaire d’une exposition sous hypnose”Presented as part of the EXTRA! Festival, September 2024
Hypnotic Show was presented at the Centre Pompidou as a collaboration between Marcos Lutyens and Raimundas Malašauskas, unfolding as a live hypnotic performance in a dedicated space on the museum’s top floor. This unique iteration invited participants into a guided trance, leading them through an imaginary exhibition experienced entirely within the mind’s eye.
Timed to coincide with Pompidou’s major Surrealism retrospective, the performance echoed the movement’s embrace of unconscious processes, mental image-making, and altered states of awareness. The now-iconic spoon hat, worn during the hypnotic induction, served as both a focusing device and a humorous nod to surrealist headwear—tactile, symbolic, and perceptually charged.
Rather than physically navigate a gallery, audiences were inwardly transported, encountering artworks within a shared psychic architecture shaped by Lutyens’s voice and suggestion. This marked only the second time the Hypnotic Show was conducted entirely in French, expanding the project’s linguistic and cultural terrain while deepening its surrealist resonance.
Special thanks and heartfelt appreciation to curator Jean-Max Colard, Christine Bolron, and Louise Brunner at the Centre Pompidou; Alysée Dores; / Alberta Pane of Galerie Alberta Pane for their vision, trust, and ongoing support in making this edition of the Hypnotic Show possible.
Venue City/Country Year
Jessica Silverman Gallery San Francisco, USA 2008
Artists Space New York City, USA 2008
Kunstverein Amsterdam, Netherlands 2009
Kadist Paris, France 2009
Centre Georges Pompidou Paris, France 2009
Artissima 17 Torino, Italy 2010
CAPC Bordeaux, France 2011
Bonniers Konsthall Stockholm, Sweden 2011
Artissima 18 Torino, Italy 2011
Forde Geneva, Switzerland 2012
Kadist San Francisco, USA 2012
dOCUMENTA 13 Kassel, Germany 2012
Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, Belgium 2012
Taipei Fine Arts Museum Taipei, Taiwan 2013
Kunstverein Toronto, Canada 2014
Liverpool Biennial Liverpool, UK 2016
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum New York City, USA 2016
Cisneros Foundation Caracas, Venezuela 2016
Black Box Teater Oslo, Norway 2016
33rd Bienal de S√£o Paulo S√£o Paulo, Brazil 2018
Centre Pompidou Paris, France 2024
Kunstverein Amsterdam, Netherlands 2024