Fuck the Sandman.

 

There is something about Sean Hart's Fuck the Sandman series that demands attention. It may be the grittiness of the black and white photography, or the urban setting, or the choice of medium--black lettering on dirty mattresses--or perhaps a combination of everything. Whatever the case, Hart's series is a roadside proclamation, an oppidan decree, an urban bidding for viewers to look. Each mattress is scarred with marks of use: stains, tears, sagging middles. Scribbled across their fabric surfaces are short phrases that seem more like personal mantras emitted from the mattresses themselves, rather than the mark of a single artist. Perhaps the quotes, such as "Dreaming is still not enough" (above) or "I shared a coffee with the bogeyman here" (below), are intended to be interpreted as words left behind by those who once occupied these beds? Nonetheless, the mattresses read like sporadic poetry, yet resonate an omnipresent sense of intimacy and ubiquity in relation people's treatment of sleep. Truly an intriguing series. There are over 90 images involved in Fuck the Sandman, view them all here.