Author Description

To say that UFOs have captured the popular imagination of contemporary America would be an understatement -- while appearances of blinking ellipsoids, whirling orbs, and have been reported throughout history, nowhere has the idea of contact with extraterrestrials taken hold so much as in the postwar United States. The UFO Show presents these phenomena in an unexpected way -- as inspiration and subject matter for contemporary visual art. Creating two- and three-dimensional work relating directly or symbolically to discs, saucers, and other images common to the subject of UFOs, 12 artists -- including Mariko Mori, Ionel Talpazan, Keith Haring, Panamarenko, Oliver Wasow, Claire Jervert, and Paul Laffoley -- confront, each in their own way, a historically ingrained and commercially reinforced locus of millennial obsession. Also included here are several provocative essays on the subject.