November 2-23, 2024

Durden and Ray Gallery

Address: 1206 Maple Avenue #832
Los Angeles, CA 90015

Opening Reception: Saturday November 2, 7-10pm
Regular Gallery Hours: Saturdays, noon-5 p.m.

MinEastry of Postcollapse Art and Culture, in association with Durden and Ray Gallery in Los Angeles, proudly presents Future Perfect, an international group exhibition curated by Vuslat D. Katsanis.

Participating artists: Jeff Beekman, Gul Cagin, Peter Christenson, Ilknur Demirkoparan, Dani Dodge, Eloisa Guanlao, Kadir Kayserilioglu, Arzu Arda Kosar, Shanna Merola, Kasia Ozga, and Helen Shulkin.

Reflecting on the mediating role of human experience, this exhibition asks what hope does the future hold when the outcome is already known? What course of action is available when all options yield the same results? How can we position ourselves between the not-yet and the will-have-happened if no environmentally conscious actions are taken? Taking its cue from the grammatical rule of the future perfect verb form in the English language, this exhibition considers the temporality and tensions between failed world-making and hopeful anticipation. The future perfect form declares an event that is bound to happen before it happens, in an assured juxtaposition of the not-yet and the yet-to-come.

The exhibition presents work by eleven contemporary artists representing Turkiye, Germany, Switzerland, Poland, France, and USA, each relating to environmental disasters and the worsening climate crisis where the eventual outcome is both known and mitigable. The works focus on themes in failed ideological and techno-capital world-making, entering the tense space between sci-fi apocalypse and social realism to carve out glimmers for hope. The senses of loss, failure, collapse, and urgency in need of collective care is communicated well in the formal aesthetic qualities of the works. So too are the solidarities across cultural borders expressed through diverse media from photography, to sculpture, video, installation, and painting.

About the Artists: 

Jeff Beekman is a Florida-based multi-disciplinary artist whose work explores human and environmental trauma. His North Florida photography series, exhibited here, documents the ongoing devastation caused by Hurricane Michael, the socioeconomic injustice it revealed in contrast to coastal towns, and the urgency of working together for a sustainable future.

Gul Cagin is a Los Angeles-based Turkish-American artist whose work explores human existence, our paradoxical relationship with the environment, and the shifting perception of reality. Breath In; Breath Out a semi-figurative fabric wall hanging, intertwines personal narrative with environmental news, highlighting how sea animals ingest plastic waste. Cagin illustrates how what we discard eventually returns to us, collapsing the future into the present and revealing the harmful effects of pollution.

Peter Christenson, a Washington-based conceptual artist and former psychotherapist, uses psychiatric diagnostic codes in his socially-engaged work. His “Tree Rorschach Tests,” combines swirling, amorphous blotches of greens with dark forest patterns and bright blue splotches. The dynamism of the set culminates in two final panels asking, “do you hate me,” suggesting our overt disrespect for the natural world.

Ilknur Demirkoparan is a Switzerland-based Turkish-American artist whose interdisciplinary practice explores identity and memory. Her I Want to Live Forever series of paintings references the Turkish kilim tradition and the hair brooch motif woven from the weavers’ own hair. Demirkoparan’s abstract renditions of this motif evoke the human stories of nomadism, survival, place-making, remembrance, and the search for everlasting happiness.

Dani Dodge: Los Angeles-based Dani Dodge’s immersive installation, The Spikes Trickled Through Our Bloody Fingers, invites viewers to wander through sheer fabric panels depicting a dreamlike desert landscape. In the fragile Mojave Desert ecosystem, the Joshua tree symbolizes resilience. Featuring raw, spray-painted and chalked surfaces embellished with vintage beading, the work highlights the challenges Joshua trees face from climate change while fostering a deeper understanding of conservation efforts.

Eloisa Guanlao: Born in the Philippines, California-based multidisciplinary artist Eloisa Guanlao’s work explores the unexamined expansion of technology and the unrestrained use of natural resources. Because Eloisa considers art-making a social and cultural endeavor, she pursues projects that are research intensive. Variation is part of her larger installation, Darwin’s Finches, which elicits a deliberate reflection upon the perils of technological dependence on the circadian rhythm of living species.

Kadir Kayserilioglu, an experimental artist from Turkiye, works in film and video art, blending play, improvisation, storytelling and chance to challenge the notions of authorship and authority. His Garden of Forgetting video, titled after Latife Tekin’s novel, pairs a wild dystopian garden setting with a voice-over question-and-answer game to reflect on our own personal fears, fantasies, and desires.

Arzu Arda Kosar: California-based Turkish-American artist, Arzu Arda Kosar, explores borders, territories, and the social psychology of space often through collaborative public works. Her “Turf Series” examines how suburban homeowners in Southern California shape the land. Documenting lawns and property lines, the series critiques humanity’s futile attempts to control nature, highlighting the overconsumption of water during a drought, and the unsustainable practice of cultivating non-native lawns.

Shanna Merola, a Detroit-based visual artist, creates sculptural photo-collages to address environmental justice struggles. Traveling to EPA designated Superfund sites, she has documented the slow violence of deregulation from Detroit’s Eastside to Love Canal, NY. Her Nuclear Winter series mixes digital and analogue renditions of biomedical and architectural imagery to examine the toxic legacies of environmental disasters.

Kasia Ozga: French-Polish artist Kasia Ozga explores evolving notions of physical presence by addressing waste, (im)migration, environmental justice, and bodily integrity. Her Buoys! Buoys! Buoys! And Life Jackets soft sculpture installation works from the Floatation Devices series, explore migration and loss at sea. She sews photos of human skin on repurposed billboard vinyls with polyfil stuffing and rope.

Helen Shulkin: Born in Belarus, Germany-based artist Helen Shulkin explores the intersection of human and architectural anatomy. Her Architecture As a Human Body manifesto of paintings depict the animism of buildings, using raw reds and pinks cut through the canvas with a knife, to evoke the sinews and bones that underpin the built environment.

About Durden and Ray:

Founded in 2009, Durden and Ray is comprised of artist/curators who work together to create exhibition opportunities at their downtown Los Angeles gallery as well as in concert with artist groups and gallery spaces around the world. Durden and Ray concentrates on small, tightly curated group shows organized by the members, and hosts international artists as part of a commitment to global exchange and alternative networks.

About the Curator:

Vuslat D. Katsanis is an academic, curator, and writer working across the USA and Europe. Her research focuses on migration narratives and visual culture since 1989. She is the cofounding director of the MinEastry of Postcollapse Art and Culture, and the 2025 NEH Visiting Professor in the Department of Literature, Media, and Writing at Hartwick College.