Adaptation

Adaptation is Josh Kline’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles and the U.S. premiere of his new, 16mm film of the same name. Set in a near-future New York City, Adaptation (2019-2022) is a short science fiction film that depicts a waterlogged city utterly transformed by the traumatic consequences of today’s ruinous and irresponsible politics and economics.

In the wake of these transformations, day to day life carries on for a group of relief workers—essential workers—whose jobs bring them into this new New York. Shot on film and produced using largely analog special effects—scale-models, miniatures, and matte photographs—Adaptation eschews the slick computer generated imagery that powers so much contemporary video art in search of a less seamless and more poetic science fiction. Presented alongside related photo-based works, sculpture, and installation, the exhibition continues the artist's Climate Change project (2019-ongoing), first shown at 47 Canal in the year before the pandemic. Climate Change is part of a larger cycle of installations concerned with the unfolding political, economic, technological, and biological changes that will shape life in the 21st Century.