Mobius Gallery is pleased to announce “Homo Deus”, a group exhibition curated by Anton Svyatsky, featuring 7 Eastern European artists - crocodilePOWER, Andrei Gamarț, Claudia Larcher, Bianca Mann, Lea Rasovszky, Roman Tolici, and Sándor Szász. Taking its title from Roman Tolici’s painting, and the eponymous new book by Yuval Noah Harari, the exhibition exposes the overarching conceptual and aesthetic thread that the gallery program has followed since its inception. All of the artists are invariably grappling with speculative narratives concerning the future and humanity’s role in it. “Homo Deus” amalgamates the individual practices of the artists into a collective vision, thereby creating a comprehensive description of the precarious and precipitous landscape human civilization currently find itself in.

Harari prompts us to consider the following conclusion-cum-dogma of modern biologists - all living beings are algorithms. Our consciousness, our free-will, our indivisible self - all a function of various algorithms inside an unbelievably complex system known as Homo sapiens. None of the aforementioned things exist as independent entities. Our consciousness, and even our “self” are illusions, system artifacts of an algorithm that processes data. Consider also that an algorithm with no consciousness is able to perform most, if not all tasks better than an algorithm with consciousness. Consciousness is not necessary for intelligence to have value, but not vice versa; we are conditioned to believe that only intelligence gives value to consciousness. Finally, consider what happens when non-conscious but impossibly intelligent algorithms have penetrated every segment of society, every market and every decision-making process - an omniscient network that knows you better than you know yourself. Would life as we know it retain any meaning?

The zeitgeist of possible futures has engulfed the imagination of people all over the world. We are witnessing the rise of algorithms; algorithms that determine the future with increasing accuracy, algorithms that can prevent the outbreak of disease by monitoring your emails, algorithms that determine what you should buy, where you should go, and whom you should meet. It’s a time where humanist values are subverted by evermore intelligent machines in the pursuit of the contemporary apotheosis of happiness, which, according to Harari, is eternal life, eternal bliss, and unlimited power - the purview of tech billionaires of Silicon Valley. Homo deus is what the select privileged number of Homo sapiens living in a mythical land are striving to become in yet another attempt to ascend Olympus. If successful, Homo deus threatens to do to Homo sapiens what Homo sapiens did to the Neanderthals.

This exhibition echoes the concerns within the book, but it does so through the various artistic practices that each act as a magnifying glass applied to various key ideas. In distilling an idea into visual form, artists are able to amplify meaning and touch substance that is inaccessible when presented as abstract thought. Seven artists reflect on humanity’s collective anxiety about the future. Seven threads weave together into a complex tapestry of speculative ideas, fears, and echoes.