Michael Lett is pleased to present The Future, an exhibition of new work by Simon Denny. In his latest body of work, Denny channels the spirit of ‘aeropainting’ (aeropittura)—the defining genre of Italian Futurism—through the visual language of todays tech, defence and aerospace industries. 

The exhibition introduces two new series of machine-aided paintings. In one, modified plotters guided by an AI trained on Italian Futurist art produce synthetic, pointillist abstractions, some in acrylic others in gouache. In another, Denny uses a handheld labelling gun as brush, duplicating the recent marketing material of defence contractors and drone manufacturers such as Anduril, Palantir, SpaceX and Helsing, as grainy transmissions. 

Recasting the aesthetics of early 20th-century modernism through the automated logic of the 21st-century, these works examine how the futurist dream of machinic speed, aerial traversal and war are being revived, a century later, in new, disorienting aesthetics of control. 

Over the last two decades Simon Denny (b. 1982, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland) has assiduously examined the aesthetics and ideologies of new technology and mass media in the digital era. Denny is a graduate of the Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland and Städelschule, Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Frankfurt am Main. In 2014 he was nominated for the Walter’s Prize, and in 2015, represented Aotearoa New Zealand at the 56th Venice Biennale, presenting the acclaimed exhibition Secret Power. Recent solo exhibitions include: Optimism, Auckland Art Gallery, Toi o Tāmaki, Auckland (2023-2024); Metaverse Landscapes, Kunstverein Hannover (2023); Creation Stories, (with Karamia Müller) Michael Lett & Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland (2022); Mine, Kunstsammlung NRW, Düsseldorf (2020), MONA, Hobart (2019); The Founder’s Paradox, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū (2019), Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland (2018) Michael Lett, Auckland (2017); Products for Organising, Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London (2015); The Innovator’s Dilemma, MoMA PS1 (2015) and The Personal Effects of Kim Dotcom, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Wellington (2014). 

Denny lives and works in Berlin, Germany. This is his thirteenth project with Michael Lett.