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In just the past two hundred years,
humankind has witnessed the industrial revolution; the invention of the
telegraph and telephone; the advent of the automobile and the computer;
the harnessing of electricity and nuclear power; the birth of robotics,
air and space travel; and a host of other amazing innovations. Ours is
a world where science often progresses faster than we are capable of
understanding. Alongside this progression is an increasing presence of
the synthetic, technological, and scientific in our natural world. As
we move into the twenty-first century, the physical sciences continue
to advance, even working to perfect nature with genetic research and
cloning. With such advancement, it is no wonder that we feel uncertain
about our future; our technological age has caused ferment and a rapidly
diminishing relationship to nature. Sci-Fi Fermentation looks
at visual artists’ interpretation of encroaching technological
advancement, its progression past our understanding, and its inevitable
transformation of the environment around us. From Ed Ruscha’s statement
about synthetic fabric, to Kojo Griffin’s depiction of invisible
signals and structures including DNA and radio waves, to John Kalymnios’s
perfected and resurrected nature, the works in Sci-Fi Fermentation–all
drawn from the Kemper Museum’s permanent collection–question
the impact of the synthetic on everyday life and artistic imagination.
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