Thanks for everyone who came out last night for the opening! We lost power about 30 minutes in so the rest of the evening was art illuminated with smartphones and birthday candles.
When imagining the distant past or the distant future we build out little dioramas in our minds. We think of analogues to the objects that surround us now.
We think our own material sphere as being more evolved than the primitive past, with their gods and idols, yet more humane and connected than we picture our technological future (either a sterile utopia or a dystopian wasteland).
In reality, our objects are primitive artifacts in the making, ceaselessly beaten into obsolescence even as they are imbued with our human use. They are technological wonders from the future, with powers unimaginable a decade ago.
We always exist in this middle – and the objects that we construct, that we have always constructed, are an attempt to bridge those unknown places of past and future.
The objects that Charles Mathis and Matt Stone created in their collaboration for SHIFT RELIC live in this space between. They are mysteries made tangible, that merge old and new ways of making, the natural and synthetic.
The work confounds our efforts to sort the objects into categories, demonstrating that the lines are not clear and have never been. The Relics will remain after we are gone- silent witnesses to our specific moment in time.