Humans on the Verge of Extinction:
an archeological study of the final days
Erik Zajaceskwoski, Christian Joy, David Shull,
Rachel Nelson
Secret Project Robot is pleased to present
Humans on the Verge of Extinction: An
Archeological Study of the Final Days. A show
in a jungle wreckage, taken from the perspective
of an anthropologist explorer from a future
civilization sent to sort through the debris of
industrialization and analyze the culture of a
doomed era.
As the explorer begins an archeological dig in
the jungle inhabited by dangerous and brilliantly
colored flora and fauna, which have grown to
gigantic heights due to the contamination of the
land, they find just below the surface of the
brilliantly covered ground, mountains of discared
objects.
As they begin to systematically arrange and
classify these things into categories a strange
story of excess becomes apparent; which
could only be described as the process by
which the civilization succumbed to the tyranny
of their own desires in an amount that would
be characterized as religious fervor, or
abhorrent and gratuitous excess. The conclusion
of the study is that it is the detritus of a civilization
that to all purposes seems socially insane and
hellbent on self destruction brought on by their
own consumption.
For this show the artists Erik Zajacekowski,
Rachel Nelson, David Shull, and Christian Joy
will build the world of the future explorer. The
viewer enters the show through a diarama-like
jungle that finds the unearthed objects, i.e. the
paintings, organized into groupings in a fashion
similar to a natural history museum or
archeological dig, in which each object set will
have a label with a description and a theorized
use. The show includes paintings, sculptures,
reliefs, and impressions of items and consumer
goods.
The show is an effigy to the excess of
consumption the discarded item and our complicit
role in our own impending demise as humans
via landfills, the destruction of nature, oceans,
and the resultant climate change.