Flying Cloud/Scout Ship, 2015
oil on canvas, 31 1/2 x 23 1/2 inches

–

installation view, Seven Fell from Earth, 2015
at Hester, New York

–

installation view, Seven Fell from Earth, 2015
at Hester, New York

–

Ship/Shadow Ship (Tuymans), 2015
oil on canvas, 31 1/2 x 21 1/2 inches

–

Earth Flag/The Eye (Seveneves), 2015
oil on canvas, 31 1/2 x 21 1/2 inches

–

installation view, Seven Fell from Earth, 2015
at Hester, New York

–

installation view, Seven Fell from Earth, 2015
at Hester, New York

–

Never Again (Ender’s Game), 2015
oil on canvas, 31 1/2 x 20 1/2 inches

–

installation view, Seven Fell from Earth, 2015
at Hester, New York

–

Black Mesa Research Facility, Aperture Science Laboratories, Cyberdyne Systems, Tri-Optimum Corporation, Tyrell Corporation, Omni Consumer Products, Abstergo Industries, Weyland-Yutani, 2014-15
oil on canvas, 31 1/2 x 21 1/2 inches

all images courtesy of the artist and Hester, New York

–

Seven Fell from Earth, the new solo exhibition by Swiss artist MATHIS GASSER, opened a few days ago at Hester in New York. This current exhibition presents a series of paintings, all in the same portrait formats in which sci-fi, myth, history and future disturbingly collide.

Like a series of still lifes, each meticulously handcrafted painting holds its subject captive in unyielding patterns of intense colors and seems to explore an hypothetic end-of-days dystopia with motifs such as crepuscular climates, ghostly vessels, post-apocalyptic landscapes, architectural ruins as well as mystical corporate symbols. The fantastical imagery of MATHIS GASSER appears subtly retrograde, yet untouchably elegant and raises eventually the question whether the viewer is witnessing the colonization of a newly formed planet, or its destruction.

The press release gives little information about the works presented in the show but proposes a series of texts ( including the text below) selected and written by RORY ROWAN which seems to be a structuring element of the exhibition.

Can we and all nations not live in peace? In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us? What could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our peoples than war and the threat of war? – President RONALD REAGAN, United Nations General Assembly, September 21, 1987

➝ Seven Fell from Earth by MATHIS GASSER is on view at Hester, New York until October 11, 2015

–