Louis Morlæ
...Pop.!Crash/(LOON)
illy Present Future 2025 Prize Exhibition
curated by Leonardo Pietropaolo
Opening: October 29th, 6.30PM
October 29th 2026 – January 11th 2027
Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo
Via Modane 16, Torino
On the occasion of Artissima 2026, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo presents ...Pop.!Crash/(LOON), a solo exhibition by Louis Morlæ, winner of the illy Present Future 2025 Prize, the twenty-sixth edition of the initiative organised by illycaffè and Artissima. ...Pop.!Crash/(LOON) is Morlæ’s first solo exhibition in Italy and continues his research combining advanced technologies, product design and storytelling. For the occasion, he will present a new installation conceived specifically for the Foundation’s space, which reflects on the acceleration towards a technology-driven future and the desire for reassurance about what lies ahead.
In his practice, Louis Morlæ (1992, Melbourne, Australia) combines sculpture, industrial product design, video and music to explore the link between the future and the present, through a sci-fi-inspired imagery that is, nevertheless, rooted in the most advanced technologies already available today. His sculptures, designed with CAD software and 3D-printed using PLA plastic, aluminium, steel, SLA resin or industrial fabrics, take the form of humanoids, autonomous vehicles or imaginary security devices. The videos, which the artist develops around character-driven narratives, feature the sculptures themselves—in their CGI-animated version—or real people rendered through artificial intelligence programmes: actors, personalities from the tech world or the artist himself. Through a body of work that combines optimism about the future with a fear of dystopian outcomes, Morlæ examines our social and cultural relationship with technology.
...Pop.!Crash/(LOON) is Morlæ’s new project and continues the artist’s investigation of recent years. Conceived for the Foundation’s space, the exhibition draws inspiration from crash-test facilities used for car safety testing and presents a new work from the SFB (Sidefall Bag) series, which is displayed at the centre of the room. The artist describes the works from this series as ‘dysfunctional safety devices’, which he imagines as protective measures in hypothetical scenarios. These are, in fact, inflatable sculptures made from the fabric used in the production of airbags. In the gallery, the video ...Pop.!Crash/(LOON) (2026)—created using artificial intelligence programmes—is projected onto the structure entitledSFB4-Gii (2026). The video features an avatar of the artist himself, starring in a series of scenes set in a dystopian world, and displays a succession of images of the near future, in which Morlæ’s digital replica speaks in an obscure language, combining forms of glossolalia with pseudo-religious invocations. Aware of how AI works, the artist employs LLMs (Large Language Models) in a paradoxical way, highlighting the underlying mechanisms that govern our relationship with these tools. Now that machines are capable of perfectly replicating our language, Morlæ uses them to generate expressions that are either meaningless or tinged with mysticism. In doing so, she suggests that the future we entrust to technology is not necessarily the result of a rational choice, but rather an act of faith.
The atmosphere of the video oscillates between irony and catastrophe, whilst the installation, punctuated by the colours and symbols of crash tests, evokes the possibility that the acceleration towards the future may reach a point of collision. In this scenario, the airbag serves a reassuring function, embodying the hope that, along the way, something might divert the course before impact.
Bio
The artistic practice of Louis Morlæ (1992, Melbourne, Australia), a visual artist born in Melbourne and based in London, lies at the intersection of two creative approaches: that of automation and industrial production, and that of character-centred storytelling. He studied at the Manchester School of Art and the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and in May 2025 he completed the Creative Technologies Fellowship at Somerset House Studios and the UAL Creative Computing Institute.
His work has been featured in international solo exhibitions, including: Tranen, Copenhagen (2026), Rose Easton, London (2025), Somerset House, London (2024), Duarte Sequeira, Braga (2023), Final Hot Desert, Isle of Sheppey (2022), Soft Opening, London (2018) and Asylum Studios, Suffolk (2018). His work has also been included in group exhibitions at: Bold Tendencies, London (2026), Rose Easton, London (2025), EKKM – Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia, Tallinn (2025), Silke Lindner, New York (2024), Horse Hospital, London (2019). He is also due to take part in an exhibition at the ICA in London in 2027. In 2025, he received the illy Present Future Prize and, in 2023, the Keeper’s Prize. His works form part of the collection of the Royal Academy of Arts in London.
