For this project created for Tauranga Art Gallery, Auckland-based artist Gregory Bennett extends on his exploration of a self-styled synthetic world, created using high-end 3D software and motion capture.
Called Exosphere (2018), Bennett’s 21 minute long digital animation references the uppermost layer of atmosphere surrounding a planet, where it thins out and merges with interplanetary space. An in-between zone that suggests both limitations and possibilities. He was inspired by French philosopher Paul Virilio’s suggestion that the modern city has become a ‘claustropolis’, where the inhabitants feel the need to put up what he describes as an ‘exospherical fence‘ or barrier to fend off the unknown dangers of the outside world.