Extended through Jan. 4, 2025 (by appointment)

PST ART: Art & Science Collide

Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty

Curated by David Familian

Oct. 5, 2024-Jan. 4, 2025
Tuesday-Saturday, 12-6 p.m.
Opening Reception: Saturday, Oct. 5, 2-6 p.m.

WINTER HOURS

- Dec. 17-21: By appointment only
- Dec. 24-Jan. 2: CLOSED
- Jan 3-4: OPEN

Appointments can be made by directly emailing gtolson@uci.edu.

Beall Center for Art + Technology

In partnership with the 2024 Getty PST ART initiative, the UC Irvine Beall Center for Art + Technology is proud to present Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty. Today, many scientists and scholars across disciplines agree that an understanding of complex systems is vital for studying a world where conditions, events, and phenomena are too entwined to be predicted or observed individually. Distinct from traditional scientific models which produce predictable outcomes, complex systems churn between order and chaos, generating feedback loops, self-organization, and uncertain, dynamic behavior.

Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty, part of Getty’s 2024 PST ART: Art and Science Collide, offers artistic frameworks for apprehending complexity in the 21st century. The exhibition presents emerging and established contemporary artists who engage myriad complex systems, including robotics, evolutionary biology, data surveillance, global warming, and bacterial intelligence. Ralf Baecker, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Julie Mehretu, Pinar Yoldas, Fernando Palma Rodríguez, Clare Rojas, Theresa Schubert, Carolina Caycedo, and David de Rozas will exhibit existing paintings, sculptures, and installations that reflect and activate complexity. Chico MacMurtrie, Lucy & Cesar Collective, Laura Splan, Hege Tapio, and Gail Wight are producing newly commissioned, interdisciplinary works under the Beall Center’s Black Box Projects residency, a program that facilitates collaborations between visiting artists and UC Irvine faculty researchers.

Saturday, Oct. 5, Opening Reception Information

Please join us for the campus opening reception of our fall 2024 program, Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty. The event is scheduled this Saturday, Oct. 5, from 2-6 p.m., with artist and curator walkthroughs at 3 and 4 p.m.

Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty, produced in partnership with Getty PST ART: Art & Science Collide, invites visitors to experience how complex systems adapt over time to evolving conditions. From climate change to financial collapse, data surveillance to immigration politics, weather patterns to cultural histories, the exhibition offers artistic frameworks for studying a world where phenomena are too entwined to be observed individually. 

Featuring work by Ralf Baecker, Carolina Caycedo and David de Rozas, Newton Harrison and The Harrison Studio, Forrest and Lula Kirkland, Cesar & Lois, Chico MacMurtrie, Julie Mehretu, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Fernando Palma Rodríguez, Clare Rojas, Theresa Schubert, Laura Splan, Hege Tapio, Gail Wight, and Pinar Yoldas.

Following the opening, visitors are invited to join the UC Beall Center for Art + Technology and Department of Drama for a staged reading of "Arcadia" by Tom Stoppard, presented in the xMPL theater. Read more and RSVP here.

Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty invites visitors to experience how complex systems adapt over time to evolving conditions. From climate change to financial collapse, data surveillance to immigration politics, weather patterns to cultural histories, the exhibition offers artistic frameworks for studying a world where phenomena are too entwined to be observed individually. 

Admission is free.

The Future Tense exhibition and ancillary program of artist lectures, symposia, and performances, has been generously supported by the Getty PST ART initiative and The Beall Family Foundation.

Learn More

Image credit: Laura Splan, Baroque Bodies (Ambient Portals #1), 2022. Digital animation created with 3D nucleosome model and AI-generated image. 01:23 minutes. This work was made possible by the Simons Foundation. Created in collaboration with Adam Lamson, Science Collaborator and theoretical biophysicist at Flatiron Institute, a division of the Simons Foundation. ©2022 Laura Splan.

712 Arts Plaza, Irvine, CA 92697 | 949-824-6206 | beallcenter.uci.edu | beallcenter@uci.edu
Gallery hours: Tuesday-Saturday, noon-6 p.m.

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