What You See, Unseen

16
Materiality
Imagination:
Unreal Objects and Allegory
Heidegger suggests that art has the potential to
activate the imagination and thrust it into imaginative
realms that transcend materiality:
A work, by being a work, makes space for that spaciousness. ‘To make space for’
means here especially to liberate the Open and to establish it in its structure. This
in-stalling occurs through the erecting mentioned earlier. The work as work sets
up a world. The work holds open the Open of the world. 3
a
This statement is paradoxical in that it implies a
“structureless structure”. In this sense, the open
of the world exists in an imaginative space; not a
true world, but an ephemeral arena of space, open
and free, extending out of, but not truly part of the
World.