“I have a lot of questions about how the future might look, and I don’t want an algorithm to draw them. So let’s do it instead.” With that sentence, artist Scott Listfield tasked a group of artists with digging into their imaginations, finding their vision of the future, and putting in the present for all of us to see.
The result is “The Sci-Fi Show,” a multimedia art exhibit that’ll be on display via Gallery 1988 in Los Angeles, CA from 7-10 p.m. January 5 at 1056 S. Fairfax Ave. As most of you don’t live in Los Angeles though, it seemed obvious that io9 readers would find the work both beautiful to look at and fascinating to consider. So Listfield and Gallery 1988 allowed us to highlight a selection of work in the show in the following slides, along with some commentary from Listfield himself.
“I’m an artist. Not a scientist, not a futurist, and not even all that much of a curator. But in a time where AI and algorithms and Amazon devices are increasingly doing the talking for us, I wanted to let the artists in this show talk about the future, in their own words,” Listfield told io9. “And so I, along with the folks at Gallery 1988, invited a bunch of people to be in my sci-fi show.”
Check out several images below, or see the full show at nineteeneightyeight.com.
“Rocket” by Scott Listfield
“Hey, that’s me. I’m mostly an artist but I’m also curating this show. If you don’t know me, I’ve spent the better part of 20 years painting a lone exploratory astronaut lost in a landscape cluttered with pop culture icons, corporate logos, and science fiction references. Talking about the future—the good, the bad, the unknown—is what I do in all of my work. In these pieces I used the framing device of the moon, which really, more than anything else, to me symbolizes both the promise and the disappointment of the future. We last visited the moon before I was born. Will we get back there? If we do, will we pave it over and fill it with strip malls? Will we remake it in our image or will we learn from past mistakes? Or will we never again achieve the heights we did 50 years ago?” – Listfield
“Failure to Launch” by Chris Wade
“Beam” by Nan Lawson
“I’ve long admired Nan’s work and I own at least a couple of her prints. And so she would have been on my invite list regardless. But her recent work just amazes me. For many years, in my own painting, I was working out in real time things like style and narrative and in so many other ways trying to figure out how to make paintings the best way that I could. It wasn’t until pretty far along that I started to focus more on having a consistent emotional tone in my work. That my paintings could be recognizable by the way they make you feel, rather than what they contained or how they were painted. Nan’s recent work absolutely fits into this conversation I’m hoping to have about science fiction, the future, and the present. But damn do they make me feel things, and that is what I love most about them. It’s such a hard quality to achieve. They are sad and wistful and yet hopeful and optimistic. The future is not strictly dark nor light, it’s just very very real feeling. It makes me feel like I am standing there watching it unfold myself, and that is exactly what I hope to do in my own work, and what I hoped I could do with this show.” – Listfield
“Artifact” by Chris Faust
“Creation” by Wiley Wallace
“Wiley is another artist I thought of immediately when I began thinking about this show. I invited him to be in the first show I ever curated and have been a fan ever since. He takes so many elements that feel like they might have been plucked from a Stephen King novel or an ‘80s video game cover, but makes them absolutely uniquely his own. Is it weird to feel nostalgic for the future? For a future we haven’t yet gotten and maybe never will? A future where children explore canyons filled with powerful crystals and floating ghosts and magic skulls and rainbow portals and mystical Rubik’s Cubes. His work always feels like the future and like my childhood, which is hard for me to wrap my head around. It’s exactly the tone I was hoping for in this show.” – Listfield
“Dark Invasion” by Brian Hoffman
“The Resistance” by Josie Morway
“Josie is one of my best art friends and one of the most skilled painters I know. Her work depicts intensely detailed animals—often birds—with occasional bits of human detritus. They are often allegories for climate change and the human impact on the world, all told with a very striking absence of actual humans. I love her painting for this show so much—the blindfolded falcon is such a fantastic metaphor for how we try to look towards our own future. I don’t know that ‘sci-fi’ is something you might normally associate with Josie’s work, but I love how she stretched herself just a little bit and absolutely nailed it.” – Listfield
“Mushroom Riders” by Barry Blankenship
“Skull Astronaut 6″ by Paul Anders
“I just wanted to talk briefly about Paul. I didn’t really know him, other than online, but I liked his work, and he stopped by a show I had last year in Portland, OR and introduced himself by handing me a drawing he had made of a delightfully drawn skeleton in an astronaut suit. I’m pretty lucky in that people hand me stickers and buttons and other free stuff somewhat regularly, and I always appreciate the gesture. But I don’t think anybody had just shown up, said hi, and handed me a drawing before. It was a kind and thoughtful thing to do, and I remembered it when I invited Paul to be in this show, and he seemed excited to do something for it. I’m really sad to say this, but Paul passed away a few months ago. I didn’t know him well, but his loss still stung. And so I’m including the drawing he gave me in this show, in memory of him. I hope it’s a gesture that in some small way returns the kindness of the one he did for me.” – Listfield
“Tethered” by Andie Taylor
“May We Shine Like Stars” by Adam Himoff
“Adam is an old college friend of mine and I’m thrilled to have him in this show. His piece is stunning and feels futuristic and cosmic, yet also, to me at least, feels referential in some way to traditional advertising or even to AI generated images. You can stare at it for a while before the hidden message hits you, and to me that delay makes it so much more satisfying.” – Listfield
“Deadzone” by Michael Dandley
“Artifact” by Kelly McKernan
“Kelly is one of the first artists I thought of when I began thinking about this show. I’ve been a fan of her work for a long time and I really admire how public and open she has been about how various AI companies have been stealing and referencing her work without her permission or approval. If there is anybody I wanted to capture this exact moment in time, it is Kelly, and she created a stunning piece of work for this show. It’s a gorgeous and moving depiction of how her own art has been taken and mutated into something else. The horror of seeing your own creative vision taken away from you, fed to machines, and recycled back to you endlessly. It’s a personal story but also an allegory for our time and it contains everything that AI art cannot—genuine humanity.” – Listfield
“DisneyX” by Nuri Amantullah
“Speczacular” by Zach Benson
“Number 6″ by Scott Listfield
Seen here in full.