Ten Futures finds its theme perched between the science fiction genre and the futures unfolding around us in real time. Through drawings, photographs, video, sculptures, short stories, and a video game, the artists in the exhibition daydream, fear for, and build their own imagined worlds.
The term science fiction can be defined simply be reversing the phrase: fiction based on science. As technology expands at an exponential rate, so does the imaginations of those using it. Issues of access, class, religion, race, gender, and sexuality become hardwired into the softwares and devices being made today. Are the scientists and designers of tomorrow creating these technologies with queer and non-binary people in mind? What about POCs? Women? Witches? Artists? Earth? The artists in Ten Futures use the sci-fi genre to make sense of, escape from, and question their own 21-century realities and the futures they hold.
Artists: Shohei Katayama, Summer Jade Leavitt, Adam Milner, Celeste Neuhaus, Paul Peng, Everest Pipkin & Loren Schmidt, Maybe Jairan Sadeghi, Centa Schumacher and Bradley Weyandt
Co-curated by Fred Blauth and Dave Zak
Opening Reception: Friday, December 21st 6-9pm
Gallery Crawl Reception: Friday, January 25th 6-10pm
Show runs: December 21st – February 24th
937 Gallery: 937 Liberty Ave, Second Floor, Pittsburgh, PA 15222
***
Shohei Katayama and Bradley Weyandt examine the consequences of the materials we harvest and construct through their works. Katayama’s prophetic, heat reactant sculpture satirically speaks to the fragility of nature and our own relationship with it. Weyandt’s surreal work borrow the shapes and designs of industrial materials then renders them useless by subverting their makeup. These artists are chameleons and reflect what they see.
Everest Pipkin & Loren Schmidt let viewers into their environments by implementing one of the most used tropes associated with the sci-fi genre: they give their characters’ a quest. Their video game, Spiral House, turns inward by asking players to navigate the subconscious space and architecture of a crumbling dream. Paul Peng’s works pursue a more pictorial take on the quest by taking cues from experimental comics and furry cultures. His drawings render monster boys living their day-to-day lives in search for comfort in their own skin.
Summer Jade Leavitt, Adam Milner, and Maybe Jairan Sadeghi, also take their viewers on journeys but for different reasons. These three artists desperately travel through time to sync with a lover, save a dying planet, and build a home on the moon, brick by brick. Their artworks might be set in other places and times but their tales are love stories as much as they are fantasies.
Celeste Neuhaus and Centa Schumacher draw upon the sciences of the occult to create their image and sculpture based artworks. Neuhaus’s CANARY IN THE COAL MINE consists of seven structures that fluctuate between cauldrons, traps, and wombs. These works ensnare synthetic and natural materials that intertwine to question our relationship with symbols and signs on an alchemical level. Using her own experimental photography techniques, Schumacher’s lens-based work mashes up aesthetics of spirituality and religion.
All documentation photos taken by J Houston.
Fred Blauth 