The term Scotopia comes from the Greek skotos, meaning 'darkness', and -opia, meaning 'a condition of sight’. Scotopic vision names the ability of the eye to adjust under low-light conditions. It means to see in the dark. Though scotopia has nothing to do with ‘topos’ – like in utopia, meaning place – I still wonder whether we couldn’t imagine it as somewhere people go; a place where a lot of us, in some sense, already live. In medieval times, melancholy was understood as a form of genius. And Cy Twombly first learned how to paint by practising in dimmed light. Might we consider residents of Scotopia as especially gifted in a similar way, finely tuned? To stare into darkness for a long time affords you certain privileges; to see nuance and specificity in the inexplicable, the mad, the surreal indicates you’re less likely to get lost.

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The artists in this exhibition span centuries and continents and dimensions. We see faces and spaces, real and imagined. Dreamers, drinkers, riders at moonlight, heroes of the stage, the bar, the beyond. Where they align, perhaps, is in their capacity for night vision, for seeing where others don’t. Because they stayed up longer, dared to spend more time looking, or not looking away.

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