The title Retrofuturology is taken from an exhibition of the same name that took place in 2011 at Observatory in Brooklyn, NY, curated by Wythe Marschall and Ethan Gould. The drawings stem from collaged elements of 16th Century medical diagrams, film stills, videogame imagery, cartoons, Futurist sculpture, and 3D computer animation models. Black lines are often used in outlining figures in cartoons, defining territorial boundaries on maps, inscribing bodily contours in medical diagrams, and forming iconographic or glyph based languages. These works seek to question the authority of the diagrammatic, medical, black-line style by the contradictory, inside-out people they portray. When the drawings are translated into letterpress prints, or zombified, the lines are embedded in the paper in a singular, impactful, compression and each edition of prints comes to represent a blurring between individual and multiple.
These digital prints investigate ways bodies merge with their environment. Hair falls out, skin "dies" and sheds, saliva is flushed away, shadows appear and disappear, fingerprints are pressed into whatever they touch. Do these traces actually leave a mark of a named individual? Or, when do names become irrelevant and these materials become fully absorbed into the world? At what point can a body become separate from the landscape, or are they always merged to some degree? Is that dandruff on the flatbed scanner "dead" and is it still "me?"
Dimensions Variable, Archival Inkjet Print
Dimensions Variable, Archival Inkjet Print
Dimensions Variable, Archival Inkjet Print
H: 15 in. x W: 11 in. Letterpress Print (Nick Hurd, WASP)
H: 15 in. x W: 11 in. Letterpress Print (Nick Hurd, WASP)
H: 15 in. x W: 11 in. Letterpress Print (Nick Hurd, WASP)
ink on paper H: 24 in. x W 18 in.
H: 15 in. x W: 11 in. Letterpress Print (Nick Hurd, WASP)
H: 15 in. x W: 11 in. Letterpress Print (Nick Hurd, WASP)
H: 15 in. x W: 11 in. Letterpress Print (Nick Hurd, WASP)
Influenced by moments in zombie films that occur before the word "zombie" is introduced, this work creates images of figures on the verge of recognition or legibility. In many zombie narratives a the notion of home shifts from geographic labels and enclosing structures to the human body itself. Building from these narratives, these works examine the fortification, or lack thereof, of the body's parameters.
H: 40 in. x W: 30 in. Ink, Acrylic, Canvas
H: 40 in. x W: 30 in. Ink, Acrylic, Canvas
H: 40 in. x W: 30 in. Ink, Acrylic, Fabric
In the works entitled Ancestral Palimpsest, George Pfau and Josh Hagler collaborated to create a body of layered “Pfaugler” prints as a way of engaging with the artistic touch of dead relatives. While digging through family archives, both of artists discovered significant figurative drawings by relatives of whom they have little or no memory. Some of the imagery chosen comes from a drawing by architect, Clarence Mayhew (George's grandfather), of figures at the base of Notre Dame Cathedral.
H: 14" x W: 11" Pfaugler Print: Ink on transparency (with Josh Hagler)
H: 14" x W: 11" Pfaugler Print: Ink on transparency (with Josh Hagler)
H: 14" x W: 11" Pfaugler Print: Ink on transparency (with Josh Hagler)
H: 14" x W: 11" Pfaugler Print: Ink on transparency (with Josh Hagler)
H: 14" x W: 11" Pfaugler Print: Ink on transparency (with Josh Hagler)
These two images can be found on the Invisible City Audio Tour Map of downtown San Francisco, The Armada of Golden Dreams is a map and audio guided tour of downtown San Francisco and the buried ships that lie beneath the streets. These images capture and layer together many of the narratives found in the audio tour. This project was fueled by Tavia Stewart-Streit, LJ Moore, Jesse Solomon Clark, Clare Haggarty, Lohnes+Wright, Sarah Ciston, Michael Maurillo Jeremiah Moore, and many other artists and writers.
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