Exhibition
Jonathan Monaghan: Escape Pod
22 Mar 2015 – 3 May 2015
Regular hours
- Sunday
- 12:00 – 18:00
- Monday
- 11:00 – 18:00
by appointment - Tuesday
- 11:00 – 18:00
by appointment - Wednesday
- 11:00 – 18:00
- Thursday
- 11:00 – 18:00
- Friday
- 11:00 – 18:00
- Saturday
- 11:00 – 18:00
Address
- 131 Allen St
- New York
New York - 10002
- United States
bitforms gallery is pleased to announce Jonathan Monaghan’s first solo exhibition in New York. Based in the U.S., Monaghan crafts surreal and psychologically driven works that operate within the real, imagined and virtual worlds. He builds absurdist 3D environments that contain compelling objects, often pulling from populist sources, such as historic architecture, religious iconography, design, science fiction, and advertising.
About
Escape Pod is an exhibition that features Monaghan’s new video installation of the same name, as well as recent prints created in a process of computational collage. Conceived of as an ambitious and dreamlike HD animation, Escape Pod has been in production for several months, and was created with commercial animation software. It builds on a rich visual vocabulary of his past works, which will also be presented at the gallery in a special one-night screening.
Escape Pod is based on hunting mythologies of the Greek and Nordic traditions. It captures the journey of a golden stag that roams modernist spaces of authoritarian confrontation and material excess. Lavish bedrooms, airport checkpoints, and a luxury riot gear boutique are encountered, as the scenery unfolds from the perspective of a floating viewpoint that is framed as a continuous shot. In a climatic moment, the golden fawn is birthed out of a BoConcept sofa, only to be carried away, into a heavenly Duty Free shop in the clouds. Seamlessly looped in a twenty-minute cycle, Escape Pod suggests an apocalyptic decadent future – one that is militarized, totalitarian and permeated by extravagance. It is a representation of labored pursuits, particularly of the otherworldly or unobtainable.
