BARBICAN X INTO THE UNKNOWN

Posted on 2017-07-17

This Summer The Barbican hosts the immense exhibition, Into The Unknown: A Journey Through Science Fiction.

With work from national archives, major and private collections, film studios, over 200 books, original manuscripts, film and TV clips, featuring rare, unseen footage, pulp magazines, adverts, concept art, props, comics and video games, as well as both newly commissioned and existing contemporary artworks this exhibition “is a journey of science fiction through different chapters. Extraordinary voyages, space odysseys, final frontiers, how we actually map the world, explore it, under the sea and into the earth,” says Patrick Gyger, the curator.

Key icons of Sci-Fi were present with some highlights from the exhibition including sensational props and models from Interstellar, Alien and First Men in the Moon, inspiring texts such as Margaret Attwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange and William Burroughs’s Nova Express and astonishing models including TARS from Interstellar and a 3D model of Sonny from I-Robot.

As Sci-Fi has seen resurgence in recent years through popular television series such as Black Mirror and Stranger Things, as leading films such as Star Wars still fill up cinemas all around the world, and as the boundaries of science and technology are explored and pushed even further, it’s clear that the genre is as loved as ever. This major exhibition is a vast exploration of one of the most celebrated genres that will impress and amaze.

Words & Photography Lo Harley

Exhibition runs through to September 1st, 2017

Barbican Centre
Silk Street
London
EC2Y 8DS

www.barbican.org.uk

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CHLOE WISE – OF FALSE BEACHES AND BUTTER MONEY

Posted on 2017-07-17

For her debut presentation in Paris, the artist lyrically explores the dissonance between visual cultures and the systems, products, and persons they aim to represent. This deliberate and loosely defined mandate sees the artist mining the iconography of milk, from maids to anthropomorphized and feminized cows to the abjection of the maternal body, carrying these symbolic propositions into unexpected territory. Here, the agreed upon translation of the unhealthy and unnecessary production of dairy is contrasted with the romantic and pastoral ideals through which they are disseminated. This particular discord becomes emblematic of truth’s precarity in sites wherein one element is meant to stand in for entire systems.
Female sitters in Wise’s delicately composed portraits stand amongst goods of this industry, conjuring the elite portraiture of a bygone era while negating the fixity of status that these images once affirmed. Instability is signaled through odd pairings of props, such as Evian water bottled filled with almond milk, as well as the engorged size of each sitter, looming over the viewer from a stratospheric vantage, reveling in her command of our attention and dissidence in conforming to any one frequency of time, place, or standard of beauty.

Opposite – Virgo Triennial, 2017

Exhibition runs from September 5th through to October 7th, 2017

Almine Rech Gallery
64 Rue de Turenne
75003 Paris

www.alminerech.com

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KAREL FUNK

Posted on 2017-07-17

In a conscious inversion of portraiture’s traditional function, Funk’s subjects are all seen from the back, swathed in hooded coats made of synthetic and technologically engineered materials. The subjects’ identities become anonymous, enveloped and displaced by their garments’ contours and colors. The paintings become purely formal, floating abstractions of light, shadow, and rippling fabrics which recall Renaissance and Flemish 17th century portraiture. With an almost trompe l’oeil flourish, the human origin of the subject disappears into its stark white backdrop, with an emerging dimensionality that is tactile and engulfing.

Painted slightly larger than life-size, the figures are imposing and disquieting at first glance, belying a material magnetism that beckons further investigation. Every crease in each hood seems to suggest its own story, its own contribution to the mythology of the individual sitter and the group as a whole. Born out of Funk’s interest in the mediation between intimacy and personal space experienced on a packed subway car, these folds and creases take on a metaphorical aspect, traces of human activity recorded into ostensibly inert and impermeable materials. The smallest details begin to suggest larger connections, as choices in attire and their functional properties also suggest modern extrapolations of traditional kinship and clan mentalities. In his negation of identity in portraiture, Funk’s highly intensive practice has – seemingly in spite of itself – developed into a simple yet inscrutable index of the inescapable human tendency to negotiate selfhood.

Opposite – Untitled #84

Exhibition runs through to August 18th, 2017

303 Gallery
555 W 21st Street
NY 10011
New York

www.303gallery.com

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