First Friday reception: January 5, 6 - 11pm

Future Nomad is an exhibition brimming with references to the urban nomad movement of the early 1970s. Artists in the exhibition have produced artworks –sculptural, architectural, interventionist, diagrammatic, and conceptual – to propose formal and aesthetic possibilities for a futuristic version of the nomadic. Although Future Nomad curator Sara Reisman was initially inspired by a series of books from the early seventies entitled Nomadic Furniture 1 & 2, artworks in the exhibition propose nomadic structures that reach beyond house wares to include minimalist art, adaptable architecture, religious observance, geographic boundaries, and territorial claims. In their introduction to the first edition of Nomadic Furniture, authors Victor Papanek and James Hennessey proposed the scale of the human body as the starting point for developing their furniture designs. Using the body as the essential measure is more relevant than ever in the era of globalization, and is also the starting point for several artists in the exhibition. Following the publication of their books, the authors contributed to a wider appreciation for the “Urban Nomad” movement that has been undoubtedly eclipsed by mass production of highly designed consumer goods and many new modes of mobility in urban culture. Nomadic Furniture designs are all too familiar; their templates can be found in high and low design culture, from Andrea Zittel on down to Ikea.

Lieven de Boeck (Belgium), Carlos Bunga (Portugal), Caitlin Masley (Brooklyn), R. Scott Mitchell (Los Angeles), Brian O’Connell (New York), Shinique Smith (Brooklyn), Saso Sedlacek (Slovenia), Alessandro Nassiri Tabibzadeh (Italy), and vydavy sindikat (Brooklyn) have made artworks that have modular, portable, and collapsible qualities, taking into account the varied conditions that produce mobility in the 21st Century. Like Hennessey and Papanek, artists in the exhibition have generally chosen to work with found, recycled, and cheap materials to construct projects that highlight how the reconfiguration of everyday life – from urban development to shifting borders – augments our experience of mobility. Some artists in the exhibition address the repetition of the built environment’s design, while others express optimism about mobility as a choice, and several artworks capture the confusion produced by forced movements from one urban center to another. Scheduled as Vox Populi’s final show in the Gilbert Building on Cherry Street, Future Nomad is an appropriate sendoff as the gallery prepares for its next venue.