The Future Was Now
2018
Photo courtesy of Adam Murphy
Since oil was discovered in Los Angeles in 1892, more than nine billion barrels of oil have been
produced in the Los Angeles area. As of today, there are at least 30,000 active wells pumping
approximately 230 million barrels of oil a year, making Los Angeles County the second most
productive oil county in the State of California. This still active and present history is deeply at odds
with many Californians ideas of sustainability and the identity of our state. More particularly, while
Los Angeles is one of the most well known cities in the world, most people have no idea that its
economic and environmental history was so founded on fossil fuel.
Therein lies the root of this body of work - these new drawings, created from reference photographs
found in the Los Angeles Public Library, walk the line between describing a shared, forgotten history
and prophesying a terrifying, Orwellian future. While each of the drawings comes directly from an
actual, recorded moment, together they create a dizzying sense of dreamlike dislocation -- are the
images real? A dream? It is this tension between imagination and reality; actual past and possible
future that I wish to explore. These are moments that should have been indelibly burned into our
collective, cultural psyche, and yet our societal amnesia is such that we have lost touch with the
events entirely. A failure to learn from the past inevitably leads to the repetition of mistakes, and if
we are unaware of our past entirely, we will continue as we are -- strolling nonchalantly Towards the
End of All Things.