Let’s face it, flying cars are coming. We’ll admit that they probably won’t be opening up any aerial super highways in the next couple of years, but with the boom in advancement (and investment) in technology including reusable space shuttles, delivery drones – a future with flying cars is pretty much inevitable.
So what will that future look like? Well, according to French artist Renaud Marion, pretty darn cool.
Opening tomorrow at the M.A.D Gallery in Dubai’s Alserkal Avenue, the “Air Drive” exhibition showcases the artist’s production of a series of photos that are a throwback blend of retro style with futuristic imaginings. Iconic cars from the glory days of automobile production are transformed into airborne transport, catapulting their vintage design into a visionary age. The pictures are really quite surreal.
Like most of us who grew up in the 1980s, Marion was convinced that by the year 2000 everyone would be piloting flying cars, like the landspeeder from Star Wars or the futuristic soaring machines from French artist, Moebius. Marion’s dream of one day propelling a floating vehicle has not yet become reality but in this series, the 41-year-old has brought to life the ‘hover’ vehicles of his childhood fantasies.
“As a child, I imagined the new millennium with flying cars, spaceships, parallel worlds, extra-terrestrials living with us on earth and time travel,” says the photographer. “We would have all been dressed up in space outfits and equipped with laser pistols. These are the dreams of a normal child, I think… I hope.”
Motivated by the idea that “our dreams of today are the reality of tomorrow,” and his quest to create the flying cars of his boyhood imagination, Marion developed the unique concept for his Air Drive series. At the end of 2012 in Geneva, the Frenchman shot the first automobile images that he would later manipulate into levitating machines.
Capturing the idea in his head of what constitutes a “flying car” and making it palpable required a two-step “manufacturing” process. The first step involved finding the subjects of the shoot and identifying the locations; the second involved the equipment. “For the first part of the series photographed in Geneva, I chose the cars simply by walking down the street. I looked for cars parked on the side of the road as I wanted to use real size models instead of miniatures,” he says.
Marion chose to shoot classic automobiles because they most closely resembled his childhood idea of what a flying car should look like. The first vehicles he photographed included a Chevrolet El Camino, Mercedes 300 SL Roadster and Jaguar XK120.
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The “Air Drive” exhibition will be on display at the M.A.D Gallery, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai. May 10 to Oct 10, 2017.