In recent years, the climate crisis and the debate around the energy transition have also become central themes in the field of contemporary art. The works of Irish artist John Gerrard convey this perfectly, using real-time digital simulations to depict landscapes and infrastructures linked to the fossil fuel industry. Through stark imagery, the artist constructs scenarios that reflect on the historical and ecological impact of the oil era.
One of the most emblematic examples is Western Flag (pictured on the cover), dating back to 2017. The work shows a solitary flagpole in the middle of an arid Texan landscape, but instead of a traditional flag, a dense column of black smoke rises and drifts slowly with the wind. This is not a recorded video, but a continuous digital simulation built from thousands of photographs of the site. The location depicted is Spindletop, where in 1901 a massive oil discovery marked the beginning of the modern era of energy extraction in the United States. In this context, the smoke “flag” becomes a powerful symbol of the carbon age: a nation, or perhaps an entire planet, represented no longer by a political emblem but by the emissions that fueled industrial progress.
This visual language also returns in Flare (Oceania) from 2022, where Gerrard continues to explore global energy infrastructure. The work stages a gas flare—one of those burners used in the oil industry to dispose of excess gas—burning continuously within an isolated landscape. As often happens in his work, the image is a real-time simulation: the light shifts throughout the day, shadows lengthen, and the cycle of sun and night follows that of the actual location. The flame thus becomes an almost ritual presence, a luminous signal that makes visible an energy system that is usually hidden yet deeply embedded in the functioning of the contemporary world.
If Western Flag represents the symbolic peak of the oil era and Flare (Oceania) reveals its relentless combustion, a more recent work introduces a different perspective. In STANDARD (formerly Surrender (Flag)) from 2023, Gerrard envisions a white flag—the traditional symbol of surrender—made not of fabric but of thin plumes of water vapor evaporating into a desert landscape. The work is presented on a large outdoor LED screen and, as in the artist’s other pieces, it is a continuous simulation generated with real-time graphics software: the position of the sun, the shadows, and even the stars in the night sky correspond precisely to a real site near the Mojave Desert, in Nevada.
Fragile and ephemeral, this flag seems to dissolve into the air. Yet precisely in its instability, it becomes a sign of possible change. If the column of smoke in Western Flag embodied the dark pride of the fossil fuel era, the white flag of STANDARD instead suggests an act of surrender: not a political defeat, but an acknowledgment of planetary limits. As Gerrard himself has explained, the work looks toward the future—toward ideas of cessation, negotiation, and submission to the larger realities of the Earth system.
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Taken together, these works form almost a visual trilogy on the theme of contemporary energy. From the smoke flag that both celebrates and denounces oil, to the perpetual flame of industrial infrastructure, and finally to the fragile vapor flag that imagines a truce with the planet. In all of these works, Gerrard uses digital simulation to slow down time and make visible processes that normally remain unseen, transforming the landscape into a space for reflecting on our energy future.
