Miercoles cerca de las 7 de la tarde (Clepsidra series)

2023 - Painting (Painting)
130 x 155 x 3 cm

Miercoles cerca de las 7 de la tarde by Caroline Fusilier portrays two quantum computers that are mobile, with human-esque legs, these are systems at the edge of biology. The floor is awash with fluid; perhaps a chemical resource consumed by the advanced computers or a heat-sink. Where their legs meet the fluid there’s a soft glow, less intense but related to the vibrant radiation on the wall above the figures. These concentrations of light are emphasized by Fusilier’s painterly marks—gauzy traces suggestive of energy transfers. There’s a window in the room, and the dusty landscape it frames is barren, blasted with sun. The POV appears to be from across the room, through the frame of two screws that, from this vantage point, are enormous—the perspective is likely that of another computing system. Fusilier’s scenario is suggestive of current debates between the Anthropocene Anti-Humanists and the Transhumanists regarding whether artificial intelligence will supersede us, or will we simply die out as a civilization? Whether or not this near future is inevitable, there’s a growing following for these radical sentiments that reach beyond climate activism. For those in Fusilier’s generation (who may be the oldest alive to see the effect) they can project no other future.

Caroline Fusilier’s paintings are dark, foreboding, and ominous. She uses an ancient medium to portray distant futures; conjuring images of post-human quantum realities. Fusilier also makes films exploring similar themes, some of which have appeared in international festivals, and there is a strong connection between the two mediums in her practice. In an interview in CULTURED magazine, she references Stanley Kubrick as a point of inspiration—her paintings are snapshots, stills from a storyboard, framed scenarios, sometimes close-ups. Employing a non-scientific approach, Fusilier’s painting builds its own mechanics, its own speculative systems of connections. For the artist, painting is synonym with technology, and she illustrates this conceit through traces that become wires and circuits, colors and lines that enter uncertain fields, turning into liquid, smoke or light.

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