Before the movie bug bit, artist Daniel Arsham worked in sculpture media and paint. Now he’s buried in a visionary production named Future Relics, whose ambitious story meanders through nine distinct time periods over five hundred years of future human history and requires nine separate casts! During prep, Daniel researched archaeological digs and became fascinated by remains of tools left by prior archaeologists a century ago among the ancient remains of an extinct civilization that perished millenniums ago. He imagined today’s common items like cell phones and cameras becoming future fossilized relics, Daniel cast and aged a Leica from volcanic ash. He showed it to the Leica brass and they went crazy for it. They opened their archives to him and the result is the twenty-five fossilized Leicas showing the ravages of some future history.
Photographer James Law has collaborated with Daniel for a decade. He is currently shooting a behind-the-scenes photographic essay documenting the creation of the epic Future Relics movie. Twenty of Law’s often-ethereal, B&W, Leica-shot Future Relics prints flank the fossilized Leica jewel case to complete the gallery’s double exhibition.
It can be deeply unsettling to experience the magnificently engineered instruments that have become legendary status symbols gutted with gruesome, festering war wounds. The experience is impactful, filtered through neither painted canvas nor printed photo. These are convincing, real sized corpses of the iconic instruments that recorded so much of our history before becoming history themselves. Despite their apparent trauma, they are true art pieces touchable only by white gloves and viewable only through protective glass (unless, of course, you invest $11,000 to own one).
In the next part of this article we’ll experience how this exhibition is received by the ‘beautiful people’ of southern California.
EXHIBITION
Future Relics
February 7 -28, 2015
Last Days!
Beverly Hills Leica Gallery
8783 Beverly Blvd
West Hollywood, CA 90048
United States
http://www.leicagalleryla.com
