This has been a long standing argument I have had that we need to have more UFOs, martians, aliens, outer space, planets, galaxies, stars, constellations and just overall unexplainable phenomena in fine art. I’m not arguing for Roswell mug illustrations, but some good old fashioned outer boundaries of fantasy meets sci-fi type work. You already stand in front of a painting and wonder what the artist was trying to say or you attach your meaning to someone else’s meaning to make a new meaning and therefore have gone to the boundaries of your mind… why not throw a UFO in there? Seems logical.
I think this is why, a few years ago and still to this day, Aryo Toh Djojo’s work fascinates me so much and why I often thought it was misread. When he began to get more attention for his otherworldly airbrush works, and the sometimes sneaky/sometimes overt use of UFO’s in his paintings, there was a reading that the work was about film and conspiracy as opposed to pushing what our understanding of self and the world around us. The UFO and alien was about exploration, belief, disbelief, wonder and expanse. What are we and what surrounds us? And artists do this well, and sometimes a UFO helps put these thoughts in context. Sorayama, Moebius, Giger… they have all pushed this boundary to some exhilarating places.
When The Drawing Center in New York opened Voice of Space: UFOs and Paranormal Phenomena this fall, it was perfectly timed with a recent studio visit I had done with Djojo and began to think of how much the UFO or some intergalactic imagery can be used in art. Collective memory is a term the Drawing Center uses here, and I like that, as a conscious understanding that artists are the ones who have imaged the way we look at that “UFO” aesthetic. Here, they are using the works of Magritte, Arakawa, Pope L and more to convey this idea that paranormal phenomena play not only a major role in the ways in which we look at the world, but how much it dictates the way we look at artwork.
We need more UFOs in art because in a world where we are often put into algorithmic patterns of what can only be described as “what-the-fuck-has-brought-me-here” and a constant menu of vague interpretations of your own interests into a streamline of content, the UFO and explained universe provides a hope that we really don’t know that much about anything. That is a good thing. We need to know less so we can explore more about what it means to know nothing at all. And then when we get closer to meaning a UFO flies overhead and we start again. What makes this whole art world thing we love is that we have to rethink what we know all the time. I’m not saying we need to have every artist make a version of their own Voice of Space like Magritte, but I think we as viewers should see shows like Voice of Space: UFOs and Paranormal Phenomena as a reminder of how we should be looking and experiencing art. With wonder and a bit of imagination. —Evan Pricco
