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.