A Hole Hanging in the Air

In A Hole Hanging in the Air, artist Kate Conlon offers a looping dialogue between the past and future, fact and fiction, time and space.

The exhibition centers on Conlon’s "Time Machines," precise reconstructions of mechanical devices from the history of cinematic visual effects. Through a meticulous process of archival research and digital modeling, Conlon recreates illusion-generating devices such as Max Fleischer’s setback camera, Fritz Lang’s Schüfftan setup, and Stanley Kubrick’s slit-scan apparatus as cut-paper constructions. Each of these cinematic machines made visible the previously unimaginable: interdimensional travel, time dilation and contraction, extra-dimensional space... By recreating these complex and often improvised devices in exacting detail, Conlon imagines that we can return to pivotal moments in history when our collective relationship to reality changed—when time became a traversable dimension and the future became a place.

Standing in for the archetypal time traveler in the exhibition is a reimagining of a sculptural work that Conlon completed exactly ten years ago. Projected from the past, the work has taken on a new form, recording the artist’s transformation over that time and suggesting the possibility of a single artwork that is unfixed in time, maintaining its identity in multiple states and forms.

Kate Conlon is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work draws inspiration from the history of scientific thought.

Conlon has received grants and residencies from MASS MoCA, Kala Art Institute, Vermont Studio Center, Wassaic Project, Willapa Bay AIR, Haystack Mountain, ACRE, Chicago Artists Coalition, Boston Center for the Arts, and The Chicago Public Library Foundation. Her work is in the collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, Depaul Art Museum, and the Joan Flasch Artist Book Collection, and the Institute of Contemporary Art Baltimore.

Conlon served as a founding director of Fernwey Gallery and Editions from 2014 to 2018 and currently co-directs Limited Time Engagement Press (LTE). Conlon received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BA from Smith College. She is currently a Professor of the Practice in Print at SMFA @ Tufts University in Boston, MA.