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Laser 3.14 - "This Cold Metal Future" @ Radar Gallery

Dejacopis @TheC_Amsterdam

The Future has happened. It is not a remote possibility or an imaginary representation of what may be. It’s in the online pages that you are checking right now; it’s in the Facebook statuses you update constantly and the tweets that define yourself. Laser 3.14 warned us already a year ago, and he is back at Radar Gallery to show what the aftermath looks like. Follow the yellow arrows on the floor. ‘Pre-Apocalizm’, 1998, stands as a reminder of his predictions, the bodies are almost fully robotic, the faces no longer different from one another. The senses do not exist as in personal perceptions but are reduced to antennas and transmitters ready to communicate only with one controlling broadcaster. The graphic novel style of this canvas is slightly unpolished and less glossed than the others in the exhibition and marks the shift towards a new direction.

The first painting that represents the change is ‘The Gospel According to Gernsback’, 2011. The eyes of the ‘Father of Science Fiction’ are covered by a combination of a radio and a dashboard where the speedometers appear to be measuring airwaves. What is a mystery throughout ‘This Cold Metal Future’ is indeed the communication. It is a tangible presence in every piece, yet is unintelligible and considering the use of words that defines so much of the Laser 3.14 works outside the Art galleries and onto the streets, this seems to be the unspoken core of his message.

‘Binary Be Thy Name’ and ‘Pump It Up’, 2011, again display speedometers as the dominant symbol respectively against a deep red and a fuchsia pink background. There is a rather punk quality to these images. Think the steel from safety pins or studs combined with this century techno appeal, but do not picture a DIY attitude. The marker is always neat.

‘The condescending Pharmacist’, 2011, is stunning and incredibly precise in its depiction of a crazy monster faced planet being fed by a well dressed arm with a tiny pill. Now, the tab can be any drug, legal or illegal. Look close: there is a compass drawn in it. A compass that looks so dangerously similar to the icon of an Apple app.

The painting that gives the name to the exhibition ‘The Cold Metal Future’, 2011, displays what is left behind after what looks like a final battle. The sky is blood red, and the ground is all covered by iron debris. There is one leaning hand like a request for help, but do not be fooled by this sign of humanity, the grin on the robotic soldier shows no sign of compassion.

‘The Certainty of The Grave’, 2011, breaks down the pain into a flow of tears that look like gasoline, while ‘Harold, Where Have You Been?’, 2010, shatters the glass cage around one’s brain to only witness its impossibility to go back to nature: the shape is way too convoluted to allow any free thinking anymore.

So is there no hope? Are we forever doomed to the future of black and white rainbows and global warming? The answer is in the perfect clouds slowly rolling behind ‘Epic Charley’s Tylenol’, 2011. A kid holds a brain balloon, flashing a smile even after his mind has been wired to some controlling power.