FUTURA2000 | FUTURA 2020

64 pages
Edited by Eric Firestone
Text(s) by Carter Ratcliff
Designed by Russell Hassell
25.4 x 20.5 cm 
Language: English
Paperback
Publisher: Eric Firestone Gallery
2020

FUTURA2000 | FUTURA 2020 accompanies Futura 2000's inaugural exhibition at Eric Firestone Gallery, New York (October 22 - December 23, 2020) and marks his representation by the gallery.  With over 30 color plates, including custom fluorescent printing, installation images, studio photographs and an essay by Carter Ratcliff, the catalog focuses on recent paintings by Futura 20000 and documents his first New York gallery exhibition in 30 years. 

As one of the most celebrated artists emerging from the world of graffiti and street art, Futura 2000 was first recognized for bringing abstract painting to the genre. The artist’s work bears his interest in a futuristic aesthetic. Long fascinated by science fiction and the space age, he was an early adopter to sophisticated computer technology and video gaming. His painting motifs relate to these interests and often are cosmic panoramas, abstract compositions that master color, movement and line. Futura 2000 employs spray paint with virtuoso precision, creating a thin, refined line, contrasted by larger mists of color areas, and gestural brush marks. By leaving large areas of his canvases open, and allowing the forms to float across the surface Futura 2000 suggests access to a cosmic space. His recurring motifs include an atom shape, denoting perpetual motion; a crane or a linear mark signifying a break or rupture; and the Pointman: an alien, robotic figure.

Twenty new paintings in the show are made with raw unprimed canvas in an elegant, subdued palette. Earthy tones of black, umber, gray and white are punctuated with unexpected shimmers of gold or bursts of color. Larger works are compositions of Futura 2000’s sprayed atoms,framed within a defined space. Smaller square canvases in the same somber palette solely utilize brushwork. Another group is distinctly contracted with brighter colors or darker grounds, tracing forms that pull the viewers’ eye off the edges of the canvas in a dynamic, open composition.