“Future Show” is an ongoing investigation into objects of art that have vanished from the field of vision. These objects were once housed within the original Future Show in the New York's Museum of Non-Objective Art from November to December of 1948. It was an era when movements in modern art confronted the new perceptual management of modern life with corresponding visions. These lost objects shall be reconstructed:
The works that were shown in the inaugural exhibition originate from the so-called Anonymous Circle, a group of artists that defined themselves as a collective body.
Visitors to Future Show arrived via elevator at the small, 7 by 8-foot lobby on the seventh floor and found themselves in front of the east door that was blocked off.
To the west, a small door plaque read “Future Show“, though this was often not visible because “the door was mostly open.” From there, visitors would descend through interlocking galleries that were hermetically sealed with black and white opaque glass. By regressing into the womblike space of the museum, however, they were also challenged to relate to new forms of representation. Inside the galleries, an innovative system of movable, floating walls and sliding panels allowed spatial configurations to be altered according to the way exhibitions were staged in Weimar Germany. Interacting with a constantly changing environment, modern viewers had to adjust to a continual re-patterning by increasing their attention and capacity to consume. As recounted, individual works were briefly spotlighted at random, from three seconds to two minutes - one by one, with brief, occasional intervals of darkness. The concealed lighting fixtures that were directed upward provided a sense of mystery, while the flashing lights, whose deep shadows implied a film noir ambiance, generated associations with an abandoned warehouse or a fragmented curiosity cabinet. In addition, built-in shrines for original masterpieces were constructed and concealed behind walls, but only occasionally revealed.
In 1948, when the first non-objective movie theatre was built, the utopian idea of a flexible movie screen was finally realized in the museum. Titled “The Mechanical Mirror,” it functioned similarly to the eye. According to the images, the film set out to show how the architectural frame around a projected image changed. The mobile diaphragm reduced the act of viewing to the closing and opening of the eye. The viewer thus became aware that the intervening frame of the screen defined the same stimulus as that received by the eye or camera lens. Because of this duplicated gaze the entropy of the viewing frame generated the desired dynamic of the visible. The act of viewing and the act of constructing space became inseparable. The forms decomposed before they could possibly enter a discourse, and the whole vanished before one could even envision it. Paradoxically, the spectators had to be able to lose themselves in an imaginary, endless space - even though the screen implied the opposite.
The documentary film The Anonymous Circle was composed solely of the pictorial oeuvre of the artists. The camera moved across the surface of a canvas without ever revealing its frame. The film was to investigate whether painting could replace the role of the real object in cinematic narrative. If so, the audience could, almost unaware, substitute the inner world of the artist for the world as revealed in photography.
“Future Show” is an ongoing investigation into objects of art that have vanished from the field of vision. These objects were once housed within the original Future Show in the New York's Museum of Non-Objective Art from November to December of 1948. It was an era when movements in modern art confronted the new perceptual management of modern life with corresponding visions. These lost objects shall be reconstructed:
The works that were shown in the inaugural exhibition originate from the so-called Anonymous Circle, a group of artists that defined themselves as a collective body.
Visitors to Future Show arrived via elevator at the small, 7 by 8-foot lobby on the seventh floor and found themselves in front of the east door that was blocked off.
To the west, a small door plaque read “Future Show“, though this was often not visible because “the door was mostly open.” From there, visitors would descend through interlocking galleries that were hermetically sealed with black and white opaque glass. By regressing into the womblike space of the museum, however, they were also challenged to relate to new forms of representation. Inside the galleries, an innovative system of movable, floating walls and sliding panels allowed spatial configurations to be altered according to the way exhibitions were staged in Weimar Germany. Interacting with a constantly changing environment, modern viewers had to adjust to a continual re-patterning by increasing their attention and capacity to consume. As recounted, individual works were briefly spotlighted at random, from three seconds to two minutes - one by one, with brief, occasional intervals of darkness. The concealed lighting fixtures that were directed upward provided a sense of mystery, while the flashing lights, whose deep shadows implied a film noir ambiance, generated associations with an abandoned warehouse or a fragmented curiosity cabinet. In addition, built-in shrines for original masterpieces were constructed and concealed behind walls, but only occasionally revealed.
In 1948, when the first non-objective movie theatre was built, the utopian idea of a flexible movie screen was finally realized in the museum. Titled “The Mechanical Mirror,” it functioned similarly to the eye. According to the images, the film set out to show how the architectural frame around a projected image changed. The mobile diaphragm reduced the act of viewing to the closing and opening of the eye. The viewer thus became aware that the intervening frame of the screen defined the same stimulus as that received by the eye or camera lens. Because of this duplicated gaze the entropy of the viewing frame generated the desired dynamic of the visible. The act of viewing and the act of constructing space became inseparable. The forms decomposed before they could possibly enter a discourse, and the whole vanished before one could even envision it. Paradoxically, the spectators had to be able to lose themselves in an imaginary, endless space - even though the screen implied the opposite.
The documentary film The Anonymous Circle was composed solely of the pictorial oeuvre of the artists. The camera moved across the surface of a canvas without ever revealing its frame. The film was to investigate whether painting could replace the role of the real object in cinematic narrative. If so, the audience could, almost unaware, substitute the inner world of the artist for the world as revealed in photography.