EZ Future: The Video Installations and Sculptures of Joshua Haycraft

2018 Exhibition Dates and Events

• February 20 - April 13, 2018:The exhibit runs in Gallery V at PCC. Visit The Galleries at PCC during Open Hours
• Friday, March 9, 2018, 6 - 10 pm (date tentative): ArtNight Reception
• Thursday, March 29, 2018, 12 - 12:45 pm: Gallery Walk-through with Joshua Haycraft

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About the Exhibit

The video installations and sculptural artworks of Joshua Haycraft present an artificial futuristic world of technological design. A pre-packaged culture of mechanized desire, these slick consumer products promise enlightenment in easily participatory techno-interactive doses of computer aesthetics. With the idea of our reality becoming increasingly a product of the imagination, Haycraft has fashioned a science fiction “culture-by-IKEA” aesthetic , packaging and fabricating a moderated reality for the consumer of the “good life”. Purporting to provide a nirvana state without any effort, he has designed Meditation Station 1.0 which utilizes the Unity game engine to create an interactive walking meditation that is based upon the ancient labyrinth found in the tile work of Reims Cathedral in France. Without enemies, points or clear objective, the “game” can be considered both meditative and repressive, like the mindless repetitive escape found in computer games like solitaire. In another work, his interactive “Evaluation Mat” started as a tarot card reader and ultimately morphed into a machine that randomly assigns a number to the individual, arbitrarily determining one’s value as a person. Haycraft has created a whole futuristic world replete with cultural fears and desires that mimic our own. The objects and animated videos invite us to examine our relationship to technology and our increasing reliance on its easy interactive authority. Imagine spiritual enlightenment with a simple “control-click”!

Biography

Joshua Haycraft is a working artist/designer based in Los Angeles. He earned his MFA in 2009 in Interdisciplinary Art from the Maryland Institute College of Art: Mount Royal School of Art. His 2004 BFA with a concentration in Industrial Design was achieved at the University of Wisconsin-Stout.  An innovative emerging artist in the field of interactive video installation, Haycraft has shown at the Industry Gallery in Los Angeles, the Aqua Art Miami Fair, the 21C Museum in Cincinnati, and numerous galleries in Baltimore MD and Minneapolis, MN. He has participated in traveling international shows and has enjoyed residencies at Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and Vermont Studio Center on full fellowship. He received a Hamiltonian Fellowship in 2014 (Washington, DC).

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This exhibition is made possible by the support of the Pasadena Art Alliance, the Student Services Fund, the Office of the President and the PCC Foundation, and the Division of Visual Arts and Media Studies.