“There is another world, but it is in this one,” said Surrealist poet Paul Éluard. In this exhibition, artists look to the future, imagining how we move forward from the tumultuous events of the past year. [read more]
Art in the Plague Year is an online exhibition organized by UCR ARTS: California Museum of Photography and curated by Douglas McCulloh, Nikolay Maslov, and Rita Sobreiro Souther. UCR ARTS’s programs are supported by UCR College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, the City of Riverside, Altura Credit Union, and Anheuser-Busch.
All works in this exhibition are reproduced with permission of the artists/copyright holders. Works (images, video, audio or other content) must not be used or reproduced for any purposes other than fair use without prior consent of the artists.
(b. 1978, Utah. Lives and works in southern California)
Ghosts of the Future [A work in progress]
Video, sound, 5:43 min. Best viewed in full-screen.
Ghosts of the Future is a video-art, time-compression project that “mirrors and embraces the harrowing mess of humanity on the brink through layered visual metaphors,” states artist Jeff Frost. (Ghosts of the Future is working title; the piece itself is a work in progress.)
Frost’s start point is an otherworldly outdoor construction near California’s Salton Sea. Annually over the course of a decade, party-goers from Los Angeles burned often functional vehicles and stood them on end in desert alluvium. The result is both a shrine to friendship and a protest against capitalism and environmental destruction. “This deeply contradictory act of polluting the environment to protest the ills of capitalism in the name of partying and friendship serves as a starting point in which our choices collide with both the best and worst of our behaviors.” Frost’s piece layers open-ended visual metaphors. Vehicles blend into the sky. A moving blue gradient suggests a wave sweeping over humanity. The burned-out vehicles are icons of the extraction and automotive industries, their verticality a reference to high rises and entire cities. The rusted vehicles are swept by white—is it the melting arctic? a cover-up? a final disappearance?
This is a work in progress and will receive substantial updates throughout the exhibition. Return here to watch the evolution. Once updated, old versions of the film will not be viewable.
Proposed update schedule:
Jan 9th - v2.2
Feb 1st - v2.3 Mar 1st - v2.4
April 1st - v2.5
