Basel, Switzerland — 11 May 2026 — THE PAST. THE PRESENT. THE FUTURE., a presentation of three real-time simulations by john gerrard, will be exhibited by Fellowship at Art Basel 2026 (18-21 June 2026). Bringing together Western Flag (Spindletop, Texas), 2017, Flare (Oceania), 2022, and STANDARD, 2023, the booth marks the first occasion on which the three works have been shown together as a single body.
Three flags. One arc. A nine-year body of work, completed before the present moment arrived, that now describes it precisely. Each is a real-time digital simulation, rendered live by software calculating every frame as it is needed. Each is locked to the clock and seasons of an actual place on earth. Each takes the form of a flag, the oldest symbol of territory and allegiance, and replaces its fabric with something atmospheric: smoke, fire, water vapour.
Read together, the works trace an arc from carbon legacy to burning present to fragile hopeful future. Western Flag turns to the past, planted at Spindletop, Texas, where the modern oil economy began in 1901. Flare (Oceania) holds the present, burning above a heating South Pacific near Tonga. STANDARD looks to the future, rising as a plume of water vapour in the Mojave Desert: a white flag for the commonage of atmosphere, a signal of stoppage, of parlay, of submission to planetary realities larger than any nation state.
The presentation arrives at a particular moment. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz in March 2026 has produced what the International Energy Agency has described as the largest oil supply disruption in history. The three works, made between 2017 and 2023, now read as a sustained meditation on exactly this condition: the carbon legacy that produced it, the burning present it has revealed, and the fragile question of what may come after.
The Basel presentation runs concurrently with SPIRITS, gerrard's year-long commission for the Art + Technology Lab at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. SPIRITS unfolds across LACMA's homepage from December 2025 to December 2026 as 96 real-time Gaussian splat simulations of plastic objects collected from beaches across the Pacific, Indian, Mediterranean, and Atlantic oceans. Its Summer Solstice presentation takes place at LACMA on 21 June 2026, under the new David Geffen Galleries designed by Peter Zumthor, which opened in April 2026. Together, the Basel booth and the LACMA commission mark the most extensive presentation of gerrard's work in a single year.

Art|Basel June 2026

Western Flag (Spindletop, Texas)

Western Flag (Spindletop, Texas), 2017 depicts the site of the 'Lucas Gusher', the world's first major oil find, in Spindletop, Texas in 1901, now barren and exhausted. The site is recreated as a digital simulation and placed at its centre a flagpole bearing a flag of perpetually-renewing pressurised black smoke, which the artist describes as a monument to the carbon legacy of the twentieth century. Originally commissioned by Channel 4 for broadcast on Earth Day, 22 April 2017. Subsequently presented at Desert X (Palm Springs), 2019, and by TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary outside the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid in conjunction with the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP25, 2019. The work is held in the permanent collections of the Pinault Collection, TBA21 Thyssen Bornemisza Art of the 21st Century. , and in LACMA as a tokenised 30-second looping video extract. The work has circulated globally as a recurring image in climate discourse since its release and is considered one of the most important and impactful works of computer-generated live art of the early twenty-first century.
The work is a continuous simulation made using real-time computer graphics software. Every frame is generated live at approximately 50 frames per second, no two moments repeating. The simulation is locked to the computer's clock: the sun rises and sets at the exact times it would at Spindletop, Texas. Day lengths shifting across a full 365-day cycle.
The collector downloads and runs the software on a local PC, accompanied by a paper certificate of authenticity or an Ethereum blockchain token serving as on-chain proof of ownership.

Producer: Werner Poetzelberger Programmer: Helmut Bressler Modelers: Max Loegler, Philipp Marcks Game Engine: Unigine Exhibition design by Jakob Illera/Inseq. Commissioned by Channel 4 for broadcast April 22nd, Earth Day 2017.

Flare (Oceania)

Flare (Oceania), 2022 features a gas flare burning in the form of a flag in the South Pacific Ocean near Tonga. Inspired by the late Tongan activist and artist Uili Lousi whose statement ‘The Ocean is Burning’ in Madrid in 2019 lit the fire that gave rise to the work, Flare (Oceania) meditates on the existential threat that heating oceans pose to low-lying lands, as well as the economic and geopolitical factors contributing to the climate crisis. The artist describes Flare as an alarm for the burning present. 
The work is a continuous simulation made using real-time computer graphics software. Every frame is generated live at approximately 50 frames per second, no two moments repeating. The simulation is locked to the computer's clock: the sun rises and sets at the exact times it would at Spindletop, Texas. Day lengths shifting across a full 365-day cycle.
The collector downloads and runs the software on a local PC, accompanied by a paper certificate of authenticity or an Ethereum blockchain token serving as on-chain proof of ownership.

Commissioned by Bridgitt Evans.

Producer: Werner Poetzelberger Programmer: Helmut Bressler Ocean Photography : Uili Lousi + Community. Exhibition design by Jakob Illera/Inseq. Flare (Oceania) was commissioned by Bridgitt Evans. Presented in loving memory of Uili Lousi.

STANDARD

STANDARD, 2023 (formerly Surrender Flag) depicts a white flag, a symbol of peace, formed from plumes of water vapour evaporating in a desert landscape in Nevada. Though fragile and ephemeral, the flag stands as a cautiously optimistic signpost pointing towards a world less dependent on fossil fuels. For gerrard, the work 'looks to the future, towards ideas of stoppage, parlay and submission to larger planetary realities'. The work proposes that we share one atmosphere, an invisible commons that recognises no national or political boundaries, and that we may choose collectively how to care for it. 
The work is a continuous simulation made using real-time computer graphics software. Every frame is generated live at approximately 50 frames per second, no two moments repeating. The simulation is locked to the computer's clock: the sun rises and sets at the exact times it would at the depicted location near the Mojave Desert in Nevada. Day lengths shifting across a full 365-day cycle.
The collector downloads and runs the software on a local PC, accompanied by a paper certificate of authenticity or an Ethereum blockchain token serving as on-chain proof of ownership.

Commissioned by Catherine Walsh and premiered at the Hayward Gallery, London, 2023.

Producer: Werner Poetzelberger Programmer: Helmut Bressler Landscape scanning: Cedarleaf VFX Exhibition design by Jakob Illera/Inseq. Game engine by Unigine Commissioned by Catherine Walsh and presented by U2 in U2:UV Achtung Baby Live At Sphere.

SPIRITS (Pacific) #0

SPIRITS is a year-long artwork designed to be experienced on your mobile browser. Irish artist john gerrard collected 96 plastic sandals and shoes from beaches across the world, each one carrying unknown stories of the people who wore them. By photoscanning the discarded objects into high-resolution “gaussian splats,” gerrard transforms them into sculptural forms, inviting the viewer to overlay them with oil slicks or ocean currents. The work unfolds across four 24-hour events tied to the solstices and equinoxes, when the spirits gradually appear on LACMA's homepage—one rising with each passing hour, creating a constellation of found objects and oceanic memory.
Unlike video or conventional 3D scans, SPIRITS is a world rendered "live." Utilizing gaussian-splats, which load and shift in real time, these virtual sculptures exist only as they stream into the device, making the user’s finger a central cultural actor. 
How to engage with SPIRITS: Move - Press and drag Transform - Press upon the object Sound off/on - Speaker icon to bottom left Rotate - Circle icon to bottom center Clear transformation - Sun icon to bottom right

john gerrard

SPIRITS (Pacific) #3

SPIRITS (Pacific) #2

SPIRITS (Pacific) #24

washington.stream

​washington.stream depicts a refractive, eternally pluralizing superhighway populated with an infinite slow flow of over thirty thousand simulated motor vehicles. Contiguous ribbons of approaching and receding freeways form uniform red and white stripes which fill the square picture plane. A solar simulation of infinite duration, the work is calibrated to its exact geo-coordinates, and its environment tracks perfectly with the movement of the sun in the sky throughout the year. Seen from a vertiginous aerial perspective that slowly scans the scene in the round, washington.stream is, formally, a light work: during the day, the scene is obscured by thick smog; but by nightfall the color field becomes bejeweled with tens of thousands of coruscating red taillights and white headlights crawling obliquely towards or away from the viewer. 
Gerrard modeled the traffic simulation using the manifold contours of human emotions on display while driving. As one approaches this atmospheric color field, one can locate individual cars and trucks working their way through the traffic using an emotional traffic algorithm distributed into several behavior groups—the altruistic, the realistic, the selfish, and the malicious—which direct the stream of movement as individual data points forming a totality. The cause of this massive transfer of bodies is unknown—a routine rush hour, a highway accident, or even a massive exodus triggered by war or disaster—but its universality finds purchase in a multitude of media tropes. Unlike most traffic, however, the backup is bilateral and constant, thus abstracting the work from any fixed reference to time or narrative. washington.stream is about traffic with no cause or referent: a dream of displacement and alienation, or a nightmare of waste. 
washington.stream not only speaks to the unstoppable metastasis of planet-killing infrastructure, but to how national sovereignty is not only imbricated with labor but with the means to access or produce (or extract) energy. The stream represents the hematic flow of workers and consumers through a nation’s circulatory system: if contemporary American Society is predicated on and subtended by such a notion of mobility—and the accompanying political imperative to keep gasoline prices so relatively low—can one imagine a realistic alternative? washington.stream premieres at a moment in history where the synthetic dream of the open American expanse is being very acutely challenged by the reality and precarity of neoliberal capitalism and its complicated relationship with diplomacy. 
While washington.stream alludes more to the metroplex than to the beltway—its source material is based directly on Highway 405 in Los Angeles—the premiere of the work in the nation’s capital is a means to originally embed the work into a discussion of international diplomacy; how this relates to a nation-state’s relative proximity to or engagement with petro-energy; and how this fundamental and deadly ingredient shapes not only the balance of world power but the lives—and fates—of those within a certain set of borders. 
John Gerrard (b. 1974, N. Tipperary, Ireland) is considered a pioneer of simulation within contemporary art. His annual softwares are in the collections of MoMA, Tate, SFMoMA, LACMA, Pinault Collection, Ullens Foundation, M+, Pinakothek der Moderne, and TBA21, among others. Recent projects include Mirror Pavilion, originally commissioned for Galway International Arts Festival 2020 to include screenings of Corn Work and Leaf Work; and subsequently inclusions in the Sydney and Gwangju Biennials. 
The artist and von ammon co would like to thank Scott Hoffman, the commissioner of washington.stream.

Farm (Council Bluffs, Iowa)

A simulated portrait of a major data centre in the US forms the central motif of the work - joining an earlier portrait of a server building in Oklahoma titled Farm (Pryor Creek, Oklahoma).
The building, which houses many thousands of internet servers was created by the Google company and processes a significant portion of the global information load.
Working with a team of modellers and technicians the visually and conceptually intricate structure is remade by hand as a hyper realistic simulated world. Animated through the use of a gaming engine the building shifts from a physical reality to a model. The camera in the resultant world moves profoundly slowly, both revealing and appearing to scan the site. On one side of the building one finds banks of diesel generators – running continuously, rooting the scene in the wider petroleum economy, on the other side banks of powerful cooling towers. Lights flood the scene at night. As is typical in these works the building is placed in a secondary light orbit of a year, allowing night and day to travel over the portrait across an annual cycle.
Extending the artists series 'Grow Finish Units' which consists of portraits within simulated space of visually similar pork production units on the mid-western landscape, 'Farm (Council Bluffs, Iowa) 2015' continues a long standing project of documenting what the artist describes as 'energetic' realities toward an analysis of contemporary power and contemporary life.

Producer: Werner Poetzelberger Programmer: Helmut Bressler 3D Modeler: Max Loegler Project Photographer: Travis Hall Installation Development: Jakob Illera / Inseq, Vienna Game Engine: Unigine

Farm (Pryor Creek, Oklahoma)

In early 2014, following his denial of access by Google Inc, John Gerrard hired a helicopter and produced a detailed photographic survey of one the key physical sites of the internet - a Google data server building in Oklahoma, also known as a ‘data farm’. 
This survey was the starting point of Farm (Pryor Creek, Oklahoma) 2015. It features a simulated ‘twin’ of the squat building flanked by diesel generators and powerful cooling towers.
The work extends the ‘Grow Finish Unit’ series, which focuses on architecturally similar, computer-controlled park production units in the Midwestern USA.

Producer: Werner Poetzelberger Programmer: Helmut Bressler 3D Modeler: Max Loegler Project Photographer: Travis Hall Installation Development: Jakob Illera Game Engine: Unigine

Ghost Feed

Ghost Feed invites us to reflect on the relationship between technology, nature, and how we experience the environment. The monkey’s calm stillness contrasts with the urgent destruction of the forest, highlighting the tension between observation and action. It asks us to consider what it means to witness environmental damage through screens—does watching from a distance make the problem feel less immediate, or does it deepen our sense of connection and responsibility?
This work raises important questions about how technology shapes our understanding of the natural world. It challenges us to think about the ways we consume images of nature and disaster, and whether this digital distance helps or hinders our ability to respond. Ultimately, Ghost Feed encourages a deeper awareness of both the fragility of ecosystems and our own place within a rapidly changing world.

Corn Work (Corrib)

In Corn Work (Corrib) 2020 four local folk figures, the Straw Boys, remade virtually, perform a symbolic wheel of production. Changing with the seasons, each character walks a quarter wheel, turns across one spoke, emerges and walks another quarter, in time performing a synchronised solar wheel through day and night across the year. They dance alongside and in dialogue with the strong flow of the River Corrib which once provided energy for the city’s many dismantled flour mills.
To achieve the work dancers, wearing motion capture suits, originally walked, danced and performed in a studio setting. This series of motions was captured and converted into data. In time motion matching and neural networks generate the ongoing infinite choreography for the characters we see in the work. The performances were developed in close dialogue with movement analyst Esther Balfe, alongside input from the dancers themselves: Stephanie Dufresne (Spring), Ursula Robb (Summer), Justine Cooper (Autumn), and Raymond Keane (Winter). Each season sees a different historic grain of Ireland represented in the straw suits, developed by Gerardine Wisdom: Spring uses barley, Summer uses oats, Autumn uses rye and Winter uses wheat.
The portrait of Galway city and the River Corrib emerged from a 3D scan of the scene. This base material was modelled into a careful representation within a game engine, which produces the work in realtime across day and night and throughout the year. At night the characters are illuminated by a virtual spotlight. 
Corn Work (Corrib) 2020 was commissioned by Galway International Arts Festival for Galway2020, European Capital of Culture. 
The work was presented at Claddagh Quay, Galway upon a substantial Mirror Pavilion with  three sides and roof clad in a mirror polished metal and the fourth wall a high–resolution LED wall 3 - 26 September, 2020.
Corn Work was shown in 2021 at the Gwangju Biennial, South Korea. 

Producer: Werner Poetzelberger Programmer: Helmut Bressler CG Character Modelling: Max Loegler CG Character Rigs and Skinning: Arx Anima Environment development: Werner Poetzelberger Movement Analyst: Esther Balfe Dancers: Stephanie Dufresne (Spring), Ursula Robb (Summer), Justine Cooper (Autumn), and Raymond Keane (Winter) Development Dancers: Siobhan Manson, Lucy West and Ben Sullivan Drone Photography: The Drone Guys Straw suit development: Gerardine Wisdom Grain Farmers: Dan Fogarty (Wheaten straw), Gunther Falkenthal (Rye Straw), Ruairiadh and Marie Deasy (Barley and Oat Straw) Associate Producer (Galway): Declan Gibbons Line Producer (Vienna): Caroline Ecker 3D Realtime Engine: Unigine Installation development: Jakob Illera / Inseq Design GIAF Chief Executive: John Crumlish GIAF Artistic Director & Mirror Pavilion producer: Paul Fahy Financial Controller: Gerry Cleary

Leaf Work (Derrigimlagh)

Leaf Work (Derrigimlagh) 2020 presents a single female figure clad from head to foot in green Irish spring leaves. This cloaking of the figures recalls the pan European tradition of the Green Man, a mysterious but widely distributed forest entity relating to Spring celebrations and now principally known through wood carvings within medieval churches. Animated by celebrated dancer Finola Cronin the leaf covered figure in the work slowly walks a circle upon the empty Connemara landscape across night and day and over the solar year.
To achieve the work Finola, wearing a motion capture suit, walked, danced and performed in a studio setting. This series of motions was captured and converted into data. In time motion matching and neural networks generate the ongoing infinite choreography for the character we see in the work. The performances were developed in close dialogue with movement analyst Esther Balfe, alongside input from Finola herself.
The work speaks of the infinite flows of energy that animate our landscapes and societies but here the choreography centers on the representation of environmental stress. This is not a bucolic or peaceful scene. This language provides the core emotional temperature of this experimental work. An engagement aligned with dance, the seasons themselves and the food and light that sustain us all.

Leaf Work (Derrigimlagh) 2020 was commissioned by Galway International Arts Festival for Galway2020, European Capital of Culture. Producer: Werner Poetzelberger Programmer: Helmut Bressler CG Character Modelling: Max Loegler CG Character Skinning: Arx Anima Landscape development: Werner Poetzelberger Movement Analyst: Esther Balfe Dancer: Finola Cronin Drone Photography: The Drone Guys, Sligeachfilms RGB Aerial Photography, Digital Terrain/Surface Model: Bluesky Geospatial Limited Oaks : Ailbhe Gerrard / Brookfield Farm Line Producer (Galway) Declan Gibbons Line Producer (Vienna) Caroline Ecker 3D Realtime Engine: Unigine Installation development: Jakob Illera / Inseq Design

Endling (Martha)

Endling (Martha) is a portrait of the last known American passenger pigeon, who was posthumously named Martha, after First Lady Martha Washington, following the bird’s death in 1914. Gerrard’s simulation draws from historic photographs and recent scans of the bird’s preserved body, showing Martha in her cage at the Cincinnati Zoo, where she spent the final years of her life. The simulation centers on the bird’s unwavering, intense eye contact with viewers, meditating on one of the most catastrophic population collapses in recorded history. Rendered in black- and-white, Endling (Martha), commissioned by Borusan Contemporary Art Collection, Istanbul, is Gerrard’s first monochromatic simulation.
Producer: Werner Poetzelberger Programmer: Helmut Bressler Animation: Arx Anima

john gerrard

Biography

"You respond to contemporary conditions using the most powerful tools you have. Right now, that is the algorithm. And if the world is changing, we must pay attention to what's changing it."

Works

Exhibitions

Art|Basel June 2026