Until Then Then

Description:

This group exhibition problematized and critically examined nostalgia and future utopias. The mixed media work included video and installation. 

Elizabeth Zvonar’s installation, Timing Is Everything (2006), consisted of two large standing mirrors that faced one another, creating an infinite reflection. The sandblasted astrological birth charts of NASA space probes, Voyager 1 and 2, were superimposed on each mirror. Sent into space in August and September 1977, the probes contain the “Golden Record”—a NASA-funded map of humanity intended to be a snapshot of planet earth (circa 1974) for other life forms light years away. A bench was placed in the middle of the mirrors, allowing the audience to place themselves within this continuum. Zvonar composed a four-part text to accompany the installation that was framed and mounted on the gallery walls in the style of a commemorative plaque. Reflecting the optimism of the era, Zvonar’s work troubled the distinctions between belief and truth and brought our understanding of the future into question.

Holly Ward’s projected video work, Sunrise/Sunset: Three Early Modern Utopias (2005) depicted a flipbook created from Susan Bruce’s anthology, Three Early Modern Utopias (1999)—a compendium of utopian texts written by Francis Bacon, Henry Neville, and Thomas More. Ward’s video focused on an accidental yellow ink stain that saturated many pages of the book. Depending on the direction the pages were flipped, the stain resembled a setting or rising sun. Through the use of the sunset and sunrise in relation to the book’s theme, Ward pointed to the ambiguity of language as well as the function of hope as an enduring living platform of contemplation and discussion.

Eric Deis’s installation Yesterday’s Sunset (2006) made use of video delay technology to show the previous day’s sunset on a single-channel screen. On one hand overtly nostalgic, Deis’s work also employed the familiar motif of a sunset in order to point to, and ruminate on, issues such as urban development, gentrification, and death. 

In a similar gesture, Another Day (2003), a three-monitor installation by Paul Ramírez Jonas, made use of a DIY computer to continually count down the hours until sunrise for ninety global cities. Resembling airport arrival and departure monitors, the screens displayed an endless scroll of data: when a city reaches sunrise, it disappears from the screen, making room for the countdown in another city to begin. Like much of Ramírez Jonas’s work, Another Day draws attention to the failure and sadness evoked when nostalgia is relied on as a path towards the future.

The exhibition opening took place Feb 24, 2006.  

Curated by Jonathan Middleton and Candice Hopkins.