Future Tense:
Art, Complexity & Uncertainty
August 24 –
December 14, 2024
Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty, part of Getty’s 2024 PST ART: Art & Science Collide initiative, offers artistic frameworks for comprehending 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.
Cesar & Lois, Chico MacMurtrie, Laura Splan, Hege Tapio, and Gail Wight are premiering 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 and David de Rozas, The Harrison Studio, Forrest and Lula Kirkland, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Julie Mehretu, Fernando Palma Rodríguez, Clare Rojas, Theresa Schubert, and Pinar Yoldas are exhibiting existing paintings, sculptures, and installations that explore 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.
This exhibition is organized by David Familian, artistic director and curator at the Beall Center for Art + Technology, with Gabriel Tolson, curatorial assistant. Special thanks to the Beall Center’s staff Jesse Colin Jackson, executive director, and Fatima Manalili, associate director, and to the staff of the Claire Trevor School of the Arts who supported this program.
Support for Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty comes from The Beall Family Foundation and from Getty.
Download Brochure (PDF)
Artists
Ralf Baecker
Carolina Caycedo and David de Rozas, with Juan Mancias
Newton Harrison
Forrest and Lula 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
Curator
David Familian
Pinar Yoldas, Alphabet of Life, 2024. Installation view from Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty, presented by the Beall Center for Art + Technology, Irvine, CA, 2024. Photo: Will Tee Yang. Courtesy of the UC Irvine Beall Center for Art + Technology.
Lynn Hershman Leeson, Logic Paralyzes the Heart, 2022. Installation view from Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty, presented by the Beall Center for Art + Technology, Irvine, CA, 2024. Photo: Will Tee Yang. Courtesy of the UC Irvine Beall Center for Art + Technology.
Hege Tapio, Ephemeral, 2024. Speculative transdermal implant prototype designed to release synthetic emotions, dimensions variable. Installation view from Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty, presented by the Beall Center for Art + Technology, Irvine, CA, 2024. Photo: Will Tee Yang. Courtesy of the UC Irvine Beall Center for Art + Technology.
Hege Tapio, Ephemera (detail), 2024. Speculative transdermal implant prototype designed to release synthetic emotions, dimensions variable. Installation view from Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty, presented by the Beall Center for Art + Technology, Irvine, CA, 2024. Photo: Will Tee Yang. Courtesy of the UC Irvine Beall Center for Art + Technology.
ail Wight, Ostracod Rising, 2024. Pigment prints on watercolor paper, accordion binding. 26 pages, 23 x 30 inches each. Installation view from Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty, presented by the Beall Center for Art + Technology, Irvine, CA, 2024. Photo: Will Tee Yang. Courtesy of the UC Irvine Beall Center for Art + Technology
Installation view from Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty, presented by the Beall Center for Art + Technology, Irvine, CA, 2024. Photo: Will Tee Yang. Courtesy of the UC Irvine Beall Center for Art + Technology.
Installation view from Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty, presented by the Beall Center for Art + Technology, Irvine, CA, 2024. Photo: Will Tee Yang. Courtesy of the UC Irvine Beall Center for Art + Technology.
Theresa Schubert, Glacier Trilogy — Part 3: Simulating glacial water systems (detail), 2022. Graphic PC, custom code, CO2 sensor, and raspberry pi, dimensions variable. Installation view from Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty, presented by the Beall Center for Art + Technology, Irvine, CA, 2024. Photo: Will Tee Yang. Courtesy of the UC Irvine Beall Center for Art + Technology.
Installation view from Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty, presented by the Beall Center for Art + Technology, Irvine, CA, 2024. Photo: Will Tee Yang. Courtesy of the UC Irvine Beall Center for Art + Technology.
Installation view from Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty, presented by the Beall Center for Art + Technology, Irvine, CA, 2024. Photo: Will Tee Yang. Courtesy of the UC Irvine Beall Center for Art + Technology.
Installation view from Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty, presented by the Beall Center for Art + Technology, Irvine, CA, 2024. Photo: Will Tee Yang. Courtesy of the UC Irvine Beall Center for Art + Technology.
Installation view from Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty, presented by the Beall Center for Art + Technology, Irvine, CA, 2024. Photo: Will Tee Yang. Courtesy of the UC Irvine Beall Center for Art + Technology.