New Fog brings together a constellation of works by Karlos Gil in which light, bodies and obsolete technologies emerge from an exhausted future. Taking the nocturnal city as both an image and a system, the exhibition explores how desire, commerce and technological memory continue to circulate after the infrastructures that produced them have begun to disappear.
At the centre of the project is De-Extinction, a series made from fragments of old industrial neon signs. Preserving the original glass, gas and colour of these endangered luminous bodies, Gil reanimates them as archaeological remains of a former economy of signs. Once designed to attract, seduce and orient bodies through the city, they now persist as luminous fossils of a disappearing visual regime.
In Uncanny Valley, Gil’s dystopian science-fiction film, this exploration moves into the realm of the artificial body, as an android encounters its human double. Developed through research with the Ishiguro Laboratory and robotics centres in Japan, the film explores the unstable boundary between human and artificial life, where resemblance gives rise to both recognition and estrangement.
In dialogue with these luminous and cinematic works, a sculpture from the series Phantom Limbs appears as the physical residue of an electronic device. Cast from its protective packaging, the work transforms discarded industrial foam into bronze. Its cavities and ergonomic voids preserve the trace of contact between the human hand and technology.
About the artist
Karlos Gil (Talavera, 1984) studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York and at the Faculties of Fine Arts in Lisbon and Madrid. His work has been presented internationally at institutions such as Centre Pompidou, Paris; HKW, Berlin; NTU CCA Singapore; Gasworks, London; Witte de With, Rotterdam; TANK, Shanghai; FRAC–Pays de la Loire, Nantes; MoCA, Beijing; Centro Botín, Santander; and CA2M, Madrid, as well as at the 3rd Moscow Biennale and the 18th Lyon Biennale.