Curatorial Statement
Den Nya Framtidsvetenskapen (The New Science Fiction) resulted from a delayed urge to take a short break from my usual erotic painting series and indulge in a bit of garden/interior design (as I had intended with the Tune In Turn On Get Out and Stay Out (2003) collaboration with Renee Gory, but we got sidetracked into cheap occultism). Having seen works from the other artists in a short period of time, I saw a thread that I wanted to pursue.
I have thought of the whole pop-culture surrounding "domestic tending" (Better Homes & Gardens, Home Depot weekend-shopping, Ikea, Trading Spaces, aspects of Gay Eye for a Straight Guy, etc.) as a rival art form to gallery arts. Rival, because it offers its adherents a more interactive role than the consume-to-behold role assigned (intentionally or otherwise) by gallerists. And, of course, it is infinitely more popular.
My first problem was coming up with a selling point to the show. Over a conversation, we came up with the exhibit being touted as a new form of science fiction, as if these works were prototypes of grand new realms in domestic possibilities. I did not want the sci-fi theme to be explicit in the gallery space (I still wanted a nice, serene collection of works for a change), but instead to inform the exhibit from a satellite position. I had originally planned on creating an extensive website to force the sci-fi angle with image galleries and essays, but the proposal was accepted very shortly before the opening. Instead, I enlisted Frank Pollard as the show's "essayist" with the request that he draw in the domestic tending theme into his ongoing parallel world of intertwined conspiracy theories, impossible gadgetry, and dream-inspired inhuman invaders (to be presented as a manuscript on this site and published as a booklet for the exhibition).
I was not interested in organizing an exhibit to study the connections between domestic tending and sci-fi (connections could be imagined easily enough . . . interior desires manifesting as fabulous-yet-orderly environmental systems, and so on). The connection was merely tactical -- devising a situation to encourage us to create works more toned-down than our friends and associates were used to viewing, as well as a situation where weird/surreal exertions risk striking a flat note.
