Josh Kline: Freedom

A dystopian environment is produced at Modern Art Oxford in Freedom, the first solo exhibition in the UK by American artist Josh Kline (b. 1979).

At the centre of Freedom is a major installation from which the exhibition takes its title. Four towering ‘Police Teletubbies’ dressed in SWAT gear guard a space modelled after Zuccotti Park, the privately owned public space in New York City and site of the Occupy Wall Street protest camp in 2011.

In Hope and Change, US President Barack Obama, played by an actor augmented with facial substitution software, delivers a provocative new version of the President’s 2009 inaugural speech.

In this darkly compelling new exhibition, Kline highlights the erosion of privacy and civil rights in the 21st century.

Freedom is the first in a cycle of projects planned by Kline that will explore the political and economic landscape of the future.