Jordi Colomer

Jordi Colomer worked as a set designer before he became an artist and was educated as an architect and art historian, experiences that continue to influence his work. Using props and treating landscapes and cityscapes as scenery, he creates “a kind of expanded theater” in which visitors are confronted with their own roles as both participants and spectators. One particularly disorienting experience designed by the artist was the 2006 video and sculpture No Future. A sculptural intervention in the form of a sign-toting car and an enigmatic public event, the work combines inchoate political theater with lyrics from the Sex Pistols’ 1977 anti-establishment anthem God Save the Queen. Shot more than a decade ago in Le Havre, France, Colomer’s No Future—the sign spells out the words “No? Future!”—illustrates, once again, how certain artworks can grow in stature, complexity, and importance as their messages are applied to new and changing contexts.

— CVF, USFCAM

“A black car drives along the road as night falls on an expressway. Mounted on its roof is a blinking neon sign like those that crown circus-tops or casinos. It spells out both a question and an answer: ‘No? Future!’ As dawn breaks, the car stops in the city center.

“The driver, dressed in a military jacket, gets out and walks along the main boulevard while banging a drum. Occasionally she stops drumming to ring doorbells. No reply. The city is still asleep. The young woman continues her march. Her drumbeat is accompanied by rhythmic shouts. She ends her march by returning to the car and standing on its hood. A few passersby watch her shout and bang the drum until she climbs behind the wheel again, perhaps to drive to another town.

“The motto ‘No Future’ was made famous by the Sex Pistols in 1977. It is radically changed here with the use of simple punctuation, transforming its anti-establishment message into absurdist advertising or, quite possibly, into a complete refusal of discourse. This video was shot in Le Havre—a city whose center was almost entirely rebuilt after the Second World War.”

— Jordi Colomer