PLATO

Participating artists: Adam de Boer, Ákos Ezer, Émile Brunet, Henry Hung Chang, Maude Corriveau, Matthew F Fisher, Beau Gabriel, Darina Karpov, Natalie Terenzini, Peter Hong Tsun Chang and Shuto Okayasu.

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For Future Fair’s fifth anniversary edition, Plato presents works by an international group of artists focusing on the theme of escapism from May 7 - May 10, 2025.

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LA-based Adam de Boer resorts to the age-old medium of Indonesian batik to highlight the cultural and ethnic diversity of Southern California, while emphasizing its complicated role as America’s dreamland. Japanese artist based in New York, Shuto Okayasu depicts magical realism scenes of escape and memory, steeped in immigrant nostalgia. Dreamy characters by Hungarian painter Ákos Ezer find solace in games and juggling everyday chores. New Yorker Matthew F Fisher presents the essence of timeless nature scenes distilled through the prism of his life-long studies of printed matter and digital imagery from various cultures and eras. Similarly, Canadian Maude Corriveau’s otherworldly still lifes put a transcendent, escapist spin on the mass obsession with digital design and online self-fashioning.

In culturally and politically divisive times, the flight of imagination through dreams, nostalgia and escapist reverie can be a potent mechanism of healing. Featuring an international group of artists exploring these strategies in 2025 in New York would celebrate the diversity of the Big Apple as well as encourage the Future Fair visitors to imagine alternative realities, while providing them with solace and peace in the midst of a busy art fair season.​