Remote Futures

DC Moore Gallery, New York, NY

October 4 — November 3, 2012

Remote Futures explores the allure and menace of utopian fantasy, where an imagined, idealized paradise holds within it a disconcerting future. Waterston has often engaged with mythological, theological, and natural histories while proposing visual depictions of the ineffable that transcend the picture plane. In Remote Futures, there is evidence of human life in the fragments of architecture—temples, cathedrals, ziggurats, bridges—that emerge from the organic detritus. These scenes evoke places of refuge, offering an escape from the processes of time and mortality. For Waterston, however, utopian potential is untenable as such. With abstracted elements that are both corporeal and celestial, these scenes become simultaneously Edenic and dystopian.

Waterston’s formal approach complements his thematic interest in divergence. His painterly technique is drawn from both the Italian Renaissance—he layers oils and viscous glazes over gessoed wood panels—and traditional Japanese painting methods such as calligraphic brushwork. These moments of technical precision, however, are no sooner perceived than they are obscured. The resulting ethereal visions evoke both distant pasts and fantastical futures.