05 - 30 August 2008
OPENING: Tuesday 05 August 2008 18h00 - 21h00
With one small step from Mr. Neil Armstrong we reached a world that had seemed to reside outside of the reach of human experience. Yet, almost half a century later, the romantic longing for large-scale space travel, residence and communication with some yet unknown extraterrestrial force remains. This desire, a continual and unfocussed looking outwards, is linked both to the nostalgia born of our millennial uncertainty, and a looking forward to The Future, a vision simultaneously of apocalyptic dystopia and magical technological efficiencies and entertainments.
For, like the idea of outer space, the notion of The Future is in itself filled with nostalgic yearnings and anxieties. Why do we long for the future of the 1950s, buying toy tin robots with alarming zest? Why is it that when we think of the future, we still imagine a place of flying cars and household robots, fantasies we have been holding onto for over a century? How do we posit any individual identity when we know ourselves to be merely a speck of dust in the cosmos?
Michaelis Prize Winner 2007
All of these are the questions that Smith posits in this, his first solo offering, hosted by Whatiftheworld / Gallery. Using the language of outdated retro-cool technology and handcrafted sculptures, Smith presents a series of works that subtly, sadly investigate a nostalgia for the future and an insatiable and unanswerable lust for something outside of our everyday experience.’
from The Ghosts of Futures Past
The Work of Rowan Smith
By Linda Stupart
Photo: Untitle 2008
Source: WHATIFTHEWORLD
No comments:
Post a Comment