The Future: Now

A curated selection of 100 word reviews from Eutopia for Temporary Art Review.

Loris Gréaud
The Unplayed Notes Museum [2015]
Dallas Contemporary, Dallas [link]

“Future observers will pass judgment exclusively on the basis of the external, corporeal, material appearance of artwork: its meaning, content, and original interpretational framework will be necessarily alien to them.”
“From the perspective of the future archaeologist and flâneur” Gréaud’s anachronistic Museum offers “an eternity of ruins, the relics left behind.” Grandiose in scale and execution “the heroic act… [is] an eternal role model.” Indecipherable texts, mutated nature, thermal sex, and the mimicry of historical monuments are archetypically sanctified, though unknown and thus irrelevant, they are necessarily vandalized.* “The eternity… is not a spiritual one, but a material one.”

~ Ryder Richards
Boris Groys, Art Power “Hitler’s Art Theory” (p134-5)
Photo Credits: Minsk Studio // Courtesy: Loris Gréaud, Gréaudstudio.

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Antoine Catala
Embot (Teacher)  [2014] Mirror Stage: Visualizing the Self After the Internet
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas [link]

The video Embot (Teacher) addresses the relationship between humans and machines, specifically technological advances made in Artificial Intelligence. Catala’s video portrait is a computer animated young boy who speaks with an emotionless human voice, expressing statements such as “I’m alive” or “I’m hungry”. Unlike the characters in the films Chappie and Ex Machina, this boy’s expressions and gestures are a bit off, suggesting he hasn’t yet mastered human qualities and emotions. Feeling embarrassed at the machine’s inadequate attempts to evoke human emotion, we are further discomfited by the knowledge that our uniqueness could be replicable, rendering us obsolete.

~ Colette Copeland
images courtesy of the DMA

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Mendocino, 2014. Ultraviolet print on Dibond, 108 x 96 in

Mark Tribe
New Landscapes
Zhulong Gallery, Dallas [link]

Mimicking the majesty of vacant landscapes, several geometric panels portray an alter-existent aerial reality generated by computer software. Reminiscent of drone data accumulation, these ou-topos images resituate our relationship to landscape and the tranquil pastoral as potentially sinister. Complimented by flat-screens videos of nature capturing and looping a banal moment as a window onto the ideal, the site’s geo-specific context and current usage as militia training grounds conflate nature as a substrate and primer for war. Similarly, deceptively realistic digital landscapes are captured from first-person-shooter games, coopting brilliant technical artistry as escapist simulacrum into a training ground sans morality.

~ Ryder Richards
images courtesy of the artist

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Ed Atkins
Ribbons
Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London [link] June 11 – Aug 25, 2014

Careening around Ribbons is an immersive experience that fulfills like the sickest amusement park ride- thrills and chills, but no plunging depths. Projected throughout the gallery is “Dave”, a buff, gloomy computer generated avatar reciting cryptic verse, singing melancholic songs and scrawling messages of alienation on his body while drinking himself into a stupor, a uniquely human existential quandary. Panels with scribbled drawings and enigmatic text add ambiguity. Yet, like self-absorbed Dave, the installation is intoxicating, nauseously pulling us in and pushing us out in the same breath; smart-phone captivating and eerily prescient of an increasingly shallow technologic future.

~Janeil Engelstad
photo by the author

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Sue Anne Rische
Privacy World: A Fun & Secure Experience!*
The Arts Gallery, Collin College, Plano, Texas [link] _

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Fusing campy parody with subversive wit, Rische’s interactive, multimedia installation Privacy World examines our current culture’s lack of discernment, ignorance and/or apathy concerning privacy laws. Visitors willingly signed away their privacy rights, revealed personal data and subjected themselves to intense scrutiny from many not-so-covert “hidden” cameras and security guards. Unbeknownst to the public, Rische manned the control center surveying all participants for signs of hostile behavior. Using puns and creative word play the work employs cookies, memes, NSA terrorist buzzwords and social-media messaging. Interweaving educational information about privacy infringement the exhibition humorously encourages us to read the fine print.

~ Colette Copeland
images courtesy of the author and artist

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