February 10 – March 13, 2022
Underlaid by a rich understanding of art’s potential as a connective force and mechanism for empowerment, Quantum Garden introduced a generative era in our practice directed towards designing a paradigm for new systems of belief. This project interrogated the anthropological dynamics of spirituality, asking how classical forms of ritual and myth might offer lessons for living in the present. Beginning with our renaming of Earth as “Ocean,” we imagine our planet as one where past, present, and future imminently converge in a teleological metaphor for global unity. The advent of what we foresee to be a decades-long venture, Quantum Garden offers a first view at what the collective terms “open-source spirituality”. As a deconstruction of the traditional structures of religion, we are proposing a philosophy devoid of dogma or leaders, instead imbuing the work with an agenda based upon our motto, “Magic, Luck, and Friendship.” Hijacking familiar likenesses from popular media, we use intellectual property as a palette to produce records of the contemporary cultural landscape, translating this global iconography into overflowing compositions that analogize the rapid speed of media consumption. Akin to the public art projects and large-scale installations for which we are best known, these comparatively smaller works maintain a heightened sense of interactivity—rendered in a spectrum of bright hues, these densely populated landscapes lend to a wholly immersive experience. Such flashes of joy, nostalgia, and warmth are the result of what we describe as our “positive propaganda,” transporting the viewer into a transcendental state of childlike—or ultrapure—wonderment. Relational aesthetics remains a continued interest, echoed in the work’s positioning as vehicles for community building and societal healing. By playing within the zeitgeist, the collective leverages an earnest effort to create a more empathetic world.
