Kristine Moran

Kristine Moran had a mad crush on Luke Skywalker when she was a child, and she has painted science fiction landscapes—filled with flying cars, high-speed disasters and Jetsons-inspired architecture—ever since. Displaying her admirably loose handling of vibrant oils, acrylics, and alkyd resins, Moran’s new show continues the exploration of ultra-urban speed-driven futuristic landscapes that began with her critically acclaimed solo debut last year at the same gallery. Though still inspired by future-noir films like Blade Runner and Minority Report, she has turned her attention backwards, enhancing her narratives with the visionary ideas of mid-twentieth century utopian theorists such as Constant Nieuwenhuys, Archigram, and R. Buckminster Fuller. The new paintings attempt to show the state that idealistic theoretical cities of the past would be in today had they actually been built fifty years ago. Predictably, Moran’s vision is one of widespread dystopia. Competing groups, each armed with its own ideology, fight over scarce resources. Checkpoints provide inadequate protection for the wealthy, whose gated communities are tucked away in giant geodesic domes on the edge of downtown slums. Moran’s is an alternate future in which the cold utilitarian functionality of Robert Moses battles the moderating intelligence of Jane Jacobs’s new urbanism over the soul of the American city.