MOCA London to present its first fully augmented reality exhibition Encounter by the renowned California-based artist David Van Eyssen. Visitors will enter what appears to be an empty gallery except for a QR code. Once they scan the QR, it will allow them to download the Hoverlay app on their phone, and see the work in real time.
On the screen they will discover that a life size car crash occupies the space! They will be able to walk around the two cars and their drivers, who have shot through their windscreens and are suspended above the viewers’ heads. Inside the gallery, the car appears to have crashed through MOCA’s front window. From outside, visitors can see the back end of the car protruding through the glass. This incredibly life like work has been geolocated by the artist so that it can only be seen at the MOCA Project Space.
Van Eyssen started by creating a series of scans of damaged cars in body shops across Los Angeles. He then digitally stitched the scans together. Later, he scanned two professional models dressed in suits in his studio, which were then added to the scene. The tragic drivers appear to be caught in an embrace above the twisted metal. Van Eyssen then added reflective spheres and animated shards of glass to the digital sculpture which is over 26 feet long. Working with a composer, Damir Price, he then added the brutal sound of a real car crash to the work.
The image is so detailed that, walking around and through the car crash, the viewer observes minute details inside and outside the vehicles. Van Eyssen plays with viewers’ minds as the MOCA London space transforms from empty gallery to the scene of a devastating crash that captures both the force of the accident, and the tenderness of the drivers’ embrace.
Additionally, for MOCA London’s Autumn WEB exhibition (September & October), we will exhibit Van Eyssen’s A Record of Impermanence. This online exhibition includes A Dis/Appearance, All Frequencies Are Loud With Signals of Despair, A Construction Sight, A Slim Volume of Poetry in No Particular Order, and photographs from his series, In The Present Absence. This will run alongside Encounter opening 29th September at MOCA London’s project space in Peckham.
Van Eyssen was originally a painter and installation artist in London before moving to Los Angeles where he became a pioneer in online entertainment and advertising. Van Eyssen uses the medium of technology to explore time, memory, and impermanence. Fusing his instincts as a painter with his experience as a filmmaker in projected and screen-based sound and motion works, he has extended his practice to include virtual and augmented reality, photography, lenticulars, and generative extrapolations that incorporate photography and AI trained on his own work.
Van Eyssen has been exhibiting in the US and UK with the support of collectors and corporate sponsors including LG, Panasonic, Getty Images and Varjo. His recent VR show, The Private Life of Public Transport, was also sponsored by the Royal National Institute For Blind People in London. His work is in private collections in the U.S. and Europe.
Looking back on several years of cancer treatment, Van Eyssen has said that,
When time was running out, it became my subject. And this led me to the exploration of time, memory, and impermanence in my work.
David Van Eyssen Encounter, 29th September – 26th October, MOCA London
Opening event: Sunday 29th October 2nd – 4pm
David Van Eyssen has two photographic pieces included in Dr. Michael Petry’s new book Mirror Mirror being published by Thames & Hudson in November 2024.
