BORCH Gallery & Editions are delighted to present two photogravure projects by Fiona Tan, approaching different utopian visions, in 'Ideas of Utopia.'
The first collaboration between Fiona Tan and BORCH Editions, 'Studies for Elsewhere' (2018), refers to Thomas More’s book 'Utopia' (1518). In the photogravure project, Tan imagines today’s Los Angeles as More’s remote island whose inhabitants live in an ideal society. She juxtaposes the dreamlike cityscape of LA with excerpts of her own thoughts transcribed in the sign language designed by More 500 years ago for his ideal society of Utopia.
'Shadow Archive' (2019), the second collaboration, is the realization of a utopian vision by Paul Otelet and Henri La Fontaine who devoted themselves to building an archive of world knowledge, between 1895 and 1945. Tan digitally designed and constructed a circular building to house the imaginary archive closely linked to unrealized plans from the early 20th century. Nevertheless, when looking at the six photogravures depicting abandoned rooms with seemingly endless rows of index-card cabinets, the spectator gets the impression of walking a real archive—destined to decay over time like the paper it is supposed to protect.