Smarter Today ⓘ

Exhibition Statement

Smarter Today is neither an optimist or pessimist. It offers a human view of futurist landscapes, a view exploring the ideologies and projections of contemporary society. The human landscape is fallible and susceptible to weaknesses.

Alex Fischer creates human landscapes and portraits with respect to a fundamental question of art: "How can we represent the present?" His response is to investigate the ideologies and projections of contemporary society.

The advancement of machine generations has vastly outpaced the human lifespan. People have no idea what the world will be like in 20, 100, or 1000 years. Keeping in mind that our ideas of the future are the quickest ideas to fade, Fischer conglomerates a variety of sources to provide an illustration of human potential, while maintaining consideration of human nature, and individual circumstance.

Exhibition Text

Smarter Today offers a human view of futurist landscapes, a view that explores the ideologies and projections of society through the lens of contemporary art.

Alex Fischer composes his figures and landscapes by assembling a variety of visual and conceptual sources. Keeping in mind that ideas of the future are inevitably the fastest to change, Fischer maintains that human nature is a fallible and susceptible state.

Technological advancement and machine generations have vastly outpaced the tradition of the average human life. As a society, we have adapted to accept the pace at which vast differences and contrasts will influence our modes of being. All projections of which are unpredictable beyond our present context. Today more than ever before, we situate ourselves less as individuals and more as the product of multiple networks. While this network theory suggests a node's relationship to other networks is more important than its own uniqueness, we find a backlash of reflection on individual circumstance and identity.

The subjects and characters of Smarter Today are reflections on the syncretism that created them. Their exterior identities have been extricated to include all of their precursors. They are heterogeneous and intermingled with their environments, yet maintain their subjectivity in the face of a post-structuralist world.

Smarter Today is Fischer's debut solo exhibition with O'Born Contemporary.