The seminal Jeffrey Deitch exhibition “Post Human” (presented in 1992 and reimagined in 2024) explored evolving concepts of identity in the digital era. “The Abstract Future” feels in some ways like its spiritual sequel. Brilliantly curated by Alia Dahl, the gallery’s Managing Director of Artists and Exhibitions, the group show encourages patrons to contemplate the patterns that might persist once the earth and its inhabitants are transformed beyond our comprehension. Several sculptures show corporeal materials contorted into ethereal forms: Rindon Johnson’s View out the slender window: There’s always a hair in the soup somewhere and some people are looking with a magnifying glass (2019-ongoing), comprising rawhides suspended across a set of cables, pays tribute to our collective past as it comments on the precariousness of the present, while Diamond Stingily’s Kaa (2015), a snakelike coil fashioned from a single black braid, either takes on sentience or stalls in a strange purgatory due to its disembodied nature. Elsewhere, synthetic works proclaim the staying power of artifice: see Kayode Ojo’s Half-Life 11, Supreme I, and Supreme II (2023), a series of music stands decked out with costume jewelry, flimsy handcuffs, and other false metals that will remain long after our flesh rots.
The Abstract Future
Jeffrey Deitch
925 N. Orange Dr. & 7000 Santa Monica Blvd.,
Los Angeles, CA 90038
On view through August 2, 2025