Andy Hope 1930

Lomex, in a special collaboration with Hauser and Wirth, is pleased to present Andy Hope, #believe.

In advance of the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007, the housing market bore witness to a furious rise in valuation, a “space opera” of skyrocketing prices.

In the ashes of the ensuing collapse, as in the demise of any market, what remained was a mountain of paper and digital files, composed of mostly meaningless data.

Filing cabinets full of spurious research and worthless stock certificates were abandoned in foreclosed offices; outmoded hard drives filled with strings of meaningless figures were trashed.

Using a language drawn both from the historical avant-garde and science fiction, Hope has created a new body of work that activates these contexts to think through questions of value; philosophical, social and economic.

Four “brains in a vat”, tawdry symbols that refer to both financial networks and classic science fiction, converse about metaphysics, unaware of their predicament. Messages of devaluation, revaluation, and fiscal utility circulate throughout the gallery, without rhyme or reason.

Images from comic books, from errant corners of culture, and from iconic moments of art history mingle with signs of terrestrial and cosmic exploration.

The works on view raise uneasy questions about an uncertain future, drawing on images arising from the fallible deceptions of an uncanny present.