Innersphere: Sculptural Works by Rik Allen explores the artist’s rocket-inspired metal and glass creations, which hearken back to the heyday of science fiction and play with our cultural fascination with outer space and the future.

Curator: Jacob McMurray
Exhibition Design: Rik Allen, Addy Froehlich
Films: David Wulzen

Venue:
Museum of Pop Culture, Seattle, November 17, 2007 - April 27, 2008

Synopsis:
The futuristic antiquity of this series was inspired by my life-long fascination with the design of technology – especially the purposefully “futuristic” technology of the mid-20th Century. The planned marriage of design and technology that was ever-present at that time in our history amazed me as a boy while reading science fiction stories, watching NASA launches on television, seeing futuristic films, and spending long hours in the creative playroom of my own imagination. I’ve been drawing rockets for as long as I can remember, and the power of their image is expressed in the work you see today – vessels of cinematic grace and movement that travel the black seas of our creative infinity.

These works, made of glass and metal, express a paradoxical symbiosis. On the surface, these are interplanetary vessels – literally transportive and technologically designed to explore the rugged desolation of outer space. Simultaneously, these craft contain elements bundled within their transparent bulkheads – spheres of power, perhaps harnessing the plasma of a red giant or the molecular thermodynamics of an electrochemical cell, but more likely employing the even more powerful and elusive force of our imagination.

Rik Allen
November 2007

Selected Press:

• io9.com: “Blown Glass Spaceships Scatter Seeds to the Stars”^︎