Ralf Baecker

Carolina Caycedo and David de Rozas, with Juan Mancias

The Harrison Studio

Forrest Kirkland

Cesar & Lois

Chico MacMurtrie

Julie Mehretu

Lynn Hershman Leeson

Fernando Palma Rodríguez

Clare Rojas

Theresa Schubert

Laura Splan

Hege Tapio

Gail Wight

Pinar Yoldas

Curated by David Familian

Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty, part of Getty’s 2024 PST ART: Art & Science Collide initiative, offers artistic frameworks for apprehending complex systems in the 21st century. The exhibition presents emerging and established contemporary artists who engage with complexity in myriad systems, including robotics, evolutionary biology, data surveillance, global warming, and bacterial intelligence.

Chico MacMurtrie, Cesar & Lois, Laura Splan, Hege Tapio, and Gail Wight are producing newly commissioned, transdisciplinary works under the Beall Center’s Black Box Projects, a residency program that facilitates collaborations between visiting artists and UC Irvine faculty researchers. Ralf Baecker, Carolina Caycedo, David de Rozas, The Harrison Studio, Forrest Kirkland, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Julie Mehretu, Fernando Palma Rodríguez, Clare Rojas, Theresa Schubert, and Pinar Yoldas will exhibit existing paintings, sculptures, and installations that reflect and activate complexity. 

Today, many scientists and scholars across disciplines agree that an understanding of complex systems is vital for studying a world where conditions, events, and phenomena are too entangled to be observed individually. Distinct from scientific models which produce predictable outcomes, complex systems have feedback loops that can have emergent behavior that organizes into new patterns. It is this constant dynamism between order and chaos that produces the complexity and uncertainty that is visible in the art in this exhibition.