“We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done”. ― Alan Turing
The title of this exhibition, borrowed from Alan Turing, offers a glimpse of the key themes in Isaac Lythgoe’s practice: what, in the present, has the potential to shape the future, and through which known lens can we explore these ideas?
In A Short Distance Ahead, a deer stands elevated from the floor, its hooves either supported or extended by large pipettes made of glass. In a pose of imbalance, we might consider it as a chemical age “Bambi”, as a means to reflect on the impact of industry on nature and climate here confronted with a traditional storytelling symbol that proliferates through cultures and epochs. This deer is, however, prospective and in a transitory state. What may appear as an imbalance may also be read as a resistance to the symbiotic and as a repellence to its manufactured supports.
If we consider storytelling tradition, we can see that our ancestral fables were often anamorphic. Broadly speaking, the image of nature provided us with a way to discuss moral and societal ideas without having to confine them to a body. We dallied with fantasy and the supernatural but not so much with the future. We might frame this being as a representation of nature, including that which exists in the categories of the weird or the other.
From our modern perspective, there is no difference between using a robot or an alien to discuss these very same ideas. In a sense, this is a distinct timeline shift where the ideas of the future are how we tell stories of the present. Indeed, we could step further and question the collective consciousness that distinguishes between what is artificial and what is not while noting that everything man-made has derived from nature but is not considered natural.
Isaac Lythgoe (United-Kingdom, 1989) is in residency as part of the Cité internationale des arts “2-12” program.