Graz Museum shows exhibition by the “Blade Runner” designer
© APA / APA (SYD MEAD, 1981)
Syd Mead invented breathtaking worlds for legendary science fiction films like “Blade Runner”. An exhibition in the Graz Museum is dedicated to the designer of utopian film worlds until the beginning of February. It brings together around 30 gouaches and drawings with a focus on visionary urban spaces and urban utopias. The recently completed documentary film about the works, inspiration and résumé of the artist (born 1933), who died in California in 2019, can also be seen.
Syd Mead helped shape the imagination of an entire generation of how high-tech cities could look and function in the future: He was instrumental in the look of city settings in films such as “Star Trek: The Movie”, “Blade Runner”, “Aliens”, Tron or “Elysium” responsible. The artist, who called himself a “visual fururist”, developed not only the architecture for them, but also the mobility concepts with flying cars, autonomous vehicles and spaceships. The exhibition at the Graz Museum is showing the artist’s work in a solo exhibition for the first time in Austria, said museum boss Otto Hochreiter at the presentation on Monday.
“Star Trek: The Movie” (1978) was the first science fiction film Mead worked on. Before that, he had designed groundbreaking designs as an industrial designer for companies such as Ford, Chrysler, Philips Electronics and Sony. In 1982 the cult film “Blade Runner” by director Ridley Scott was released: In 2019 it is set in a gloomy, post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, the scenario of which was designed by Mead. In contrast to the urban utopias he had created up to then, according to the exhibition organizers, he drew an urban nightmare and a concrete cosmos that resembles a hell turned into stone.
The Graz exhibition, which was previously shown in Berlin and Kriens (Switzerland), was developed by the German-Austrian architecture firm O&O Baukunst (Ortner & Ortner Baukunst). It shows a selection of Mead’s convincingly realistic drawings and gouaches, which include drafts for the film settings as well as work for clients such as car manufacturers and transport companies. The works, which can be seen in three rooms, span a period from the 1970s to 2004. In a short documentary film that was created for the exhibition, the artist talks about his design projects and his life – a short time before the film designer died on December 30, 2019 at the age of 86 in Pasadena, California after a long period of cancer.
In terms of content, the compact Graz show ties in with the exhibition “Unbuilt Graz. Architecture for the 20th Century ”, which also deals with ideas and visions that were never realized, emphasized Hochreiter. At the same time, it is used as the “opening credits” to the exhibition “The City as a Data Rock. How we want to live in the future ”, which will be on view in spring 2021.
(SERVICE – Exhibition “Syd Mead – Future Cities. Designer of the World of Blade Runner” in the Graz Museum, until February 7th, 2021. Info:)
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