The Future As Disruption
June 18 - August 1, 2008
The Kitchen - 512 West 19th Street

Jonah Freeman, 1986, 2006, Digital c-print via Andrew Kreps Gallery

Science Fiction is not the only genre to maintain extensive pretensions to criticality, but it’s certainly been the most successful at popularizing representations of a more-perfect universe. From numerous Bellamy clubs in the first half of the 20th century, to Reagan’s infamous Star Wars fiasco sci-fi and its snooty sibling ‘speculative fiction’ have long provided a communal lexicon of already-popular terms for washing down wacky ideas. Beyond provisioning paint-jobs for cruder vehicles in the ideological garage however, sci-fi has also been a sort of halfway house for once and future earth-bound utopias. L. Ron Hubbard, Ayn Rand, and George Orwell have each, via careful trading on the prerogatives of fiction, managed to provide enduring portraits of reality that, for some, are not nearly alternate enough. Tonight, in any case, The Kitchen opens The Future As Disruption; a group show aimed at investigating (and hopefully also deploying) sci-fi strategies for good old critical-artistic ends. Rashida Bumbray and Matthew Lyons curate the work of Julieta Aranda, Joan Banach, Sean Dack, Jonah Freeman, Olalekan B. Jeyifous, Simone Leigh, Ann Lislegaard, Adam Pendleton, Mungo Thomson and William Villalongo. Opening reception tonight 6-8pm.