Wes Hempel’s exhibition features twelve paintings imagined as film stills from Regression, a never-realized 1950s sci-fi screenplay written by his uncle. The story follows astronauts on a sentient planet with a tropical atmosphere that regresses them to childhood in order to communicate. Hempel creates surreal backdrops with spaceships over Hollywood and statuesque men in water, subverting pop tropes by replacing female figures with contemplative male bodies.
