The Ice Age brings together the work of a Vienna based collaborative, a French animator who lives and works in Marseille, and a New York sculptor and installation artist. The title of Margaret Drabble’s British novel seemed to perfectly describe the tone of the work on view – both frigid and cruel. Drabble’s novel, which traffics in urban decay, class antagonism and pubescent sulkiness, was first published in 1977 during the declining period of the Labour Party as Margaret Thatcher solidified her ascent to power. For the British left, the eighties would indeed be an Ice Age. The correspondence to our own contemporary political climate is quite obvious. The title also serves to umbrella the exhibition’s eschewing of color: all of the works in The Ice Age – videos, drawings and sculptures – are in black and white; the comfort of color is everywhere absent.

See also: blog post by James Wagner.