Artists explore what future could hold through various mediums in new exhibit

For artists, thinking about the future -- what it might be like and what we might be like because of it -- comes pretty much as part of the job description.

And it's the fascinating yet tricky business of pondering the future that serves as the jumping off point for "Some Future -- Sometime," an exhibit that runs through July 18 at Reed Whipple Cultural Center.

The show features works by David Sanchez Burr, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas master's of fine arts graduate who also curated the exhibit, as well as artists Aaron Flint Jameson, Amelia Winger Bearskin, Craig Colorusso and fellow UNLV MFA grads Aaron Sheppard and Lake Newton.

In the exhibit, the artists explore the idea of the future via media ranging from photography to installation art to video.

Burr concedes that, while the future is a motif that does "frequent an artist's mind," attempting to pin it down is a tall order.

Burr began thinking about the exhibition about two years ago. And back then, he notes, "I didn't even know what I was going to be doing two years from now, in terms of what my art would look like or where I would be."

The works the participating artists have created for the show represent, Burr says, "sort of the synthesis of hopes and different passions" they have toward the future.

The show is, he notes, not utopian. "I don't think there is any real sense of utopianism in the work."

But, considering the economically challenged world in which the exhibit opened, that seems about right.

"Everything happens so quickly these days," Burr says, so think of this show as an attempt to mull over "the idea of the future and what that means to think about the future."

"That," he adds, "has generated some extremely interesting discussions" and not just among artists.

"A lot of people today are thinking about the future," Burr says. "A lot of people are thinking about a hopeful future, a better-than-today future, specifically in Las Vegas.

"We've taken a lot of punches with this economy, and I think a lot of people today are thinking about a better future for everyone and trying to figure that out and finding something that's a little more sustainable."

In fact, Burr adds, "it would be interesting to curate this exhibit again" to have it serve as a sort of "continuing dialogue."

"The shifting of economies is not new. We've always had the ups and downs. That's the nature of capitalism," Burr says.

But, he continues, "my understanding is, for people I talk to, (it) doesn't always work for them. And saying it doesn't work for them to a certain extent means that the way the system is set up now doesn't work for them, which is a large question and a very deep and loaded political question."

But whatever happens, expect artists to keep pushing at those temporal boundaries.

Artists, Burr says, have nothing to lose. "There is so much in the world we create, we produce, we invent, and nobody will pay attention to us sometimes. And, sometimes, we will make something that will radically shift people's opinions."

Visual arts, literature, architecture have "at one point or another affected the larger community" and fostered "some amazing changes," Burr says.

"But these things happen only when art exists, A, and, B, that they challenge themselves to do things that have a chance of it being a complete failure."

Contact reporter John Przybys at jprzybys@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0280.