Dawn DeDeaux: I've Seen the Future and It Was Yesterday

I've Seen the Future and It Was Yesterday is Dawn DeDeaux’s seventh exhibition with the gallery and features works in development for her upcoming exhibition Thumbs Up for the MotherShip, opening in May 2017 at MASSMoCA. Also included is a selection of transitional works from her MotherShip Series launched in 2013. The exhibition will have a studio-like, experimental atmosphere and will include works from various collections.

Unlike her earlier work that explored diminishing ecosystems, the struggle to survive on the planet and the logistics of how to leave it, DeDeaux’s new works, Souvenirs of Earth, are resigned to an outcome of failure. The artist surmises that we have fled Earth with only a few 'souvenirs,' such as kitschy tourist statues of the Pietà and the Eiffel Tower; postcards of the Mona Lisa; a photograph of Masaccio's Expulsion of Adam and Eve; miniatures of the Pyramids, Palmyra and so on. These souvenir relics take on an inverted sacredness while the commodity of authenticity goes extinct. Space Stories, a collection of existing and created science fiction imagery digitally produced on metal panels, explores how outer space was depicted prior to man's actual entry into space. Stars and Planets presents an assortment of works offering imagined portraits of planets and galaxies. The Zeppelin Series reflects DeDeaux’s long-standing fascination with the largest airships built to date, and the monumental construction rings used in their fabrication are a core motif in her work. The developing series I Saw the Future and It was Yesterday presents a nostalgia for modernism already belonging to the past, depicted through manipulated photographs of New York's JFK Airport surrounding the iconic TWA terminal building created by Eero Saarinen in 1962 and now undergoing renovation for a hotel conversion.