The Future of Loneliness

Guts Gallery is pleased to present The Future of Loneliness, a group exhibition curated by Maria Dolfini. Drawing from Olivia Laing’s homonymous essay, the show explores interpretations of loneliness and intimacy in present times, probing the impact of current technological and social structures on our ability to connect and find authenticity in human contact. The exhibition does not endeavour to portray solitude as a homogenous experience, but as a fluid, meandering and non-chronological journey, a collection of tales and emotions reflecting on the fabric of aloneness today.

What does it mean for artists to make art, consciously and unconsciously, in this period of time? Post-covid, where we re-emerge from our individual isolation, and awkwardly and wearily try to reconnect; post-internet, where the omnipresence of social media and the AI-generated revolution engender an increasingly individualised and dispersed self, reshaping our concepts of bodily touch and authenticity; and amidst a post-Brexit Europe and divisive world-scape, where countries are at war, communities are fractured and our sense of belonging unsettled. How do we experience intimacy and longing within these technological, social and political horizons? Can art be an antidote to loneliness and isolation?

As a lonely person might lose the sense of normative time, the exhibition branches out from the present, re-imagining itself through different temporal axes, encompassing the future and the past. When the present feels elusive, we apathetically distance ourselves in a desire to escape, looking at the future with uncertainty and the past with nostalgia.

Featured artists: Kate Burling, Thomas Cameron, Henry Curchod, Yage Guo, Jungwon Jay Hur, Sam King, Anna-Lena Krause, Lisa Liljeström, Norberto Spina, Hampus Wernemyr, Luisen ZK