FUTURE FOSSILS

ORGANIZER AND DATES
MassArt Art Museum, Boston, Massachusetts
January 23-April 13, 2025

TOUR
Susquehanna Museum of Art, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
May 24-September 7,2025

Mary M. Torggler Fine Arts Center
Christopher Newport University
Newport News, Virginia
January 29-May 17, 2026

DESCRIPTION
The 19 artists whose work comprise this exhibition, living in the Anthropocene, make resonant objects that appear as if glimpsed in a review mirror, from some time in the future. These artists are creating a physical presence of a view of what will be a disappeared past. “Fossils are the preserved remains, or traces of remains, of ancient organisms. Fossils are not the remains of the organism itself!” according to National Geographic–the exclamation point is theirs. The works the artists create are conduits for assessment and critique of today’s culture. These retrospective views of our present from an imagined future can be seen as effigies, and like Paleolithic relics, are cast—in glass, metal, plaster and resins. The works in the exhibition can be organized into two divisions with some artists working in both, and some creating hybrid works: Corporal/Effigies and Cultural/Fossils.

ARTISTS
Ai Weiwei (CN,PT); Sanford Biggers (US); Izaak Brandt (UK); Jedediah Caesar (US,UK,DE); Julian Charrière (FR,CH,DE); Tania Pérez Córdova (MX); Liz Glynn (US); Maureen Gruben (CA); Matthew Angelo Harrison (US); William Lamson (US); James Lewis (UK,AT); Jean-Luc Moulène (FR); Reynier Leyva Novo (CU); Studio Drift (NL); Do Ho Suh (KR, UK); Clarissa Tossin (BR,US); Marion Verboom (FR); Nari Ward (JM,US); Rachel Whiteread (UK)

CATALOGUE
In the form of a newspaper, soon to be a fossil itself, a catalogue was published by MassArt Art Museum, and designed by Ethan Flemmati. It includes an essay by exhibition curatorsGinger Gregg Duggan and Judith Hoos Fox, and a piece of speculative fiction written by Carolyn Amstutz Brandon Clifford, both at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an illustrated checklist.

FOR INFORMATION CONTACT
Lisa Tung, executive director ltung@massart.edu, 617.879.7335
Ginger Duggan, curator ginger@curatorsquared.com, 407.227.2565
Judy Fox, curator judy@curatorsquared.com, 617.640.4037

FFprospectus.11.7.24