This exhibition is anchored in the genre of speculative science fiction, a cultural platform that serves as a lens to explore philosophical, ethical, and cultural issues often set in an alternative reality that challenges our understanding of the current world. As a creator of visual science fiction, Schanck combines materials from the home with pop culture references to make objects that are simultaneously familiar and strange, like something out of a dream. These objects act as passive storytellers, serving as an inanimate archive for the characteristics of those who share space with them. They aim to conjure memories of moments and feelings that transcend various realities.
The selection of works presented in A Surreality illustrates Schanck’s Alufoil technique, which uses aluminum foil to cover industrial and discarded materials and then seals them with resin. This affordable material repurposes obsolete objects and changes their temporal context from past to future. In the spirit of semiotic design, as theorized by architect Robert Venturi, Schanck’s work imbues his designs with multiple layers of meaning, transforming each object into a vessel for discourse. His work contributes to the lexicon of craft practices, where objects, sculptures, and installations create undefinable and amorphous experiences.
This presentation considers the city of Detroit as a site of dreams, recalling the iconic science fiction novel “The Lathe of Heaven” by Ursula K. Le Guin. Set in a dystopian future, Le Guin’s text follows a man whose dreams can alter reality and explores themes of power, ethics, and the consequences of trying to define reality. In A Surreality, Schanck positions Detroit as his dreamscape home—a site of resilience where various communities fantasize together in various shapes, sizes, and colors. Some dreams come true; some are more complicated and harder to untangle and is a space where the logical and illogical exist simultaneously. Shimmering coffee tables, mirrors, tables, light fixtures, and ethereal chairs transport you to another dimension, sparkling and shimmering to underline the blurry nature of experience from science fiction to fantasy, creating a new reality.