Geoffrey Pugen’s Webtology: Prisms at MKG127 deconstructs digital remnants to create speculative techno-futures, using AI textures, 3D modeling, and prism film to explore collapse and renewal.
Geoffrey Pugen dissects and reassembles digital detritus into speculative landscapes, reconfiguring our relationship with technological mythologies. Presented at MKG127 in Toronto, the exhibition is a collision of AI-generated textures, 3D modeling, and reclaimed materials, yielding what Pugen terms “techno paintings.” By extracting elements from vintage science fiction novel covers and layering them with wireframe renderings, the artist constructs hybrid images that evoke the spectral presence of past utopian imaginaries—futures once dreamt, now fragmented and refracted through contemporary digital tools.
The exhibition’s two video sculptures, manifesting as a black hole and a crystal, function as conceptual counterpoints—one an abyss of technological entropy, the other a prismatic vessel of renewal. Their synchronized video projections engage in a hypnotic interplay of form and motion, underscoring the tension between collapse and regeneration. Meanwhile, Pugen’s 2D prism collages integrate salvaged 3M Prism Film from discarded LCD screens, their shifting transparencies revealing layers of spectral light and disrupted surfaces. These works invite a meditation on digital archaeology—where discarded technologies gain new aesthetic and conceptual agency.
Pugen’s practice operates at the intersection of materiality and simulation, where speculative ecologies unfold in the liminal space between the real and the virtual. Webtology: Prisms reflects his ongoing engagement with transhumanist concerns and the ecological residue of technological progress, offering a vision that is both a lament for lost utopias and a portal to reimagined futures.
