Riar Rizaldi

Gasworks presents Mirage, the first UK solo exhibition by Indonesian artist and film maker Riar Rizaldi. Rizaldi’s work explores the relationship between science, fiction, and technology. Mirage presents the first and second chapter of an ambitious, ongoing, ten-year project exploring how modern science and advanced technology affect the lives of humans and non-humans in Southeast Asia.

The exhibition centres on a newly commissioned film, Mirage – Eigenstate (2024), that weaves together analogous investigations into the nature of reality, positioning Western science as just one methodology among many in a constellation of pluralistic worldviews. The film explores different interpretations of reality, from Sufi mysticism and Monorealism to theories of quantum mechanics.

The new commission is being shown alongside the first film in the series, Mirage – Metanoia (Prelude) (2023), which uses 1970s Hanna-Barbera style animation to stage a conversation between two cosmologists about the presence of God in atoms.

Both films are presented as part of a wider installation including an aperiodic tiled floor, bespoke seating and a new comic book that provides further context for the Mirage series.