Future Fossils

Lan Tuazon @ Julius Caesar
 

September 23 - October 16

Julius Caesar is pleased to present Lan Tuazon’s Future Fossils. Tuazon’s first solo show in Chicago is the final exhibition of her trilogy on the order of things: architecture, artifacts, and now the Anthropocene. The exhibition runs September 23rd through October 16th, and the opening is Friday, September 23rd from 7-11.

Future Fossils recalls an article published under the same title by the New York Times in 2014. Announcing the discovery of plastic stones by Captain Charles Moore, a new category of rock was created called plastiglomerates by geologist Patricia Corcoran. Such evidence shows how anthropogenic waste creates human geology and how nature makes artifacts of human culture. To give something gravitas, we say it matters. The exhibition Future Fossils is a type of mattering that expands our symbolic understanding of the world not just as a world-for-us, but also the world-as-planet and the world-without-us. Its symbolic intent is to invert order in which human culture is something contained within a larger object of the planet.

On view is a collection caught between a flea market, lab, and library. The collection consists of dissected mass produced containers nest concentrically like the rings of a tree. Using an order and process more commonly found in geology, the bottles, coolers, Tupperware and toys rearrange cultural matter to grow and accumulate over time. The collection is archived in cascading angled shelves to give visibility to multiple layers of cross sections that signify both the byproduct of human consumption and patterns of production (i.e. false fruits, liquid commodities). In Future Fossils, no nouns are left whole as all objects house one another.

Lan Tuazon b. Philippines, 1976.

Lives and works in Chicago. She has exhibited internationally at the Neue Galerie in the Imperial Palace of Austria, Bucharest Biennale 4, the WKV Kunstverein in Germany, The Lowry Museum in London, and in New York at the Brooklyn Museum, Artist Space, ISE Cultural Foundation, Canada Gallery, Sculpture Center, Apex Art, and the Storefront for Art & Architecture. Lan Tuazon is an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at the School of Art Institute in Chicago. Lan Tuazon is Lan Tuazon 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.