For the brilliantly bizarre AUTOPSY group show, Seventeen repositions contemporary issues of AI, post-truth and conspiratorial paranoia into good old-fashioned cult and science fiction.
Science fiction is a paradoxical genre. In the heyday of B-movies, legacy television and cultural responses to conspiracy politics, visions of what technology could provide (or destroy) in the future were all the rage. Inevitably, the aliens, time machines and hoverboards are still futuristic today, yet the sci-fi of those days feels nostalgic. For their second concept-led group show this year, following on from Kunstindustrie this Spring, Seventeen take an equally vast subject with equal rigour. The artists exhibited in AUTOPSY tap into this nostalgia—both the cold metal futurism and the grittier, hard-copy cult paranoia. But what is most impressive about the show, wonderfully curated by Joey Holder and Julia Greenway, is how this paranoia creates a disturbing feedback loop between fact and fiction.
Indeed, the gap between fact and fiction surrounds the exhibition’s central exhibit: the Roswell Alien. Artist John Humphries has recreated the being in Ray Santilli’s Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction? (1995), the infamous pseudo-documentary about grainy black-and-white footage of an alien autopsy. Though seemingly ridiculous, many believed it. Placed in a purpose-built installation, paired with the tech-psychedelia of Chino Moya’s video work AutoXenoSim (2026), this room has the spooky feeling of a clinical laboratory compromised by an unknown lifeform—the type John Carpenter spent an entire career cementing into our cultural subconscious.
But this room isn’t what viewers initially see when they walk into Seventeen; in fact, it is tucked away behind PVC strip curtains on an equally otherworldly orange. The first room, in a paler, less unfamiliar but certainly more putrid yellow, requires a very different type of suspension of disbelief.
The mood is first set by the only oil-painted works in the show by Joel Slotte, which depict the creation of a vanitas motif (Still life painter putting together a vanitas motif, 2026) and the resulting scene of a person standing behind a jar, their face warped through it (Head Behind Jar, 2025). Vanitas paintings usually contain an air of nihilism, which Slotte attributes to something otherworldly. Painted in reverse order, vanitas art’s allegory gives way to a fakery that sits at the centre of sci-fi, which often portrays humans as futile in the face of alien invaders.
Curating the show in this way, Seventeen has tapped into an issue that is all too familiar today: the “no one is coming to save you” sentiment of post-war America is alive and well; politicians and commentators fabricate the scariest stories for nefarious means. Indeed, many try to tell us that “aliens” are already among us. With AUTOPSY, Seventeen and its artists are ripping right-wing politics apart to reveal the stale bile that sits inside, still bubbling and regurgitating the same fearmongering tactics that sci-fi introduced us to all those years ago (though revived recently, admittedly quite well, by Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day (2026)). Indeed, Anni Puolakka’s Skin Kin (2026), a flayed human hide made of rubber milk, lies across the middle of the gallery, as if discarded after the artists’ operation.
The rotten heart of this autopsy sits just opposite: a brilliantly staged performance filmed by Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley, Sod & Sodie Sock Comp O.S.O’ (1998). This is the first time it has been shown since it opened in 1998, re-edited ahead of AUTOPSY by McCarthy. Several masked figures perform odd rituals in what looks like a bunker, but seems to have no real time or place. With no reference other than the classic green alien masks and some erroneous dildos, the film is difficult to place. What gives it an uncanny edge, placing it in a gritty, maniacal reality, is the slightly grainy, hard-copy quality of the video. Using the cheap trick that low quality equals authenticity (the same used in the Alien Autopsy film), the film falls from its sci-fi suspension of disbelief, crashing to the reality of a cult ritual.
Sod & Sodie Sock Comp O.S.O’ plays with our fear of the unknown, specifically of secret societies and groups that run the world through sick and twisted rituals. Timofeev draws this out in the sculptural work just next to the video, where a sleeping bag and telescope sit in front of some blinds, accompanied by a light and some illegible writing on the wall. A little peek through the blinds where the telescope is pointed reveals, of course, a wall.
Around the corner is where we find the third video work of the show: Benjamin Orlow’s You knew I was a snake (2026). The central work in the last room before the Roswell Alien, the harsh reality of our present day catches up with us. While discerning what happens in the film is difficult, it is clear that Orlow has used generative AI (or at least made it appear this way). The social and political mechanisms that inform our uncertainty about the Alien Autopsy footage may be slightly absurd, but they are still based in reality. With artificial intelligence, the conspiratorial blabberings of politicians and commentators needn’t be so formulated; with the click of a button, fears of the unknown become seemingly justified. It’s the fear of a post-modern, post-truth world where everything, ironically, is like a sci-fi film.
This unstable view of the world may seem a bit too miserable to be enjoyed, especially as the Alien Autopsy room is last, returning to the origin as if to mock us. But in this gritty nihilism, there is a spark of true, hopeful comedy. We approach these video works, sculptures, and many other drawn and laser-cut oddities with the sense of ridicule they deserve. In this extreme form, we can still just about read this post-truth nightmare for the joke that it is. The group of artists behind this wonderfully bizarre yet painfully pertinent show know that fearing the unknown has always been the enemy of peace—but they also know that laughter, self-deprecation and creativity are much more powerful.
To find out more about shows at Seventeen, visit their website.
Featured Image: Installation view of Ausgang Studio, Age of Data (2026), Site-specific installation; Chino Moya, AutoXenoSim (2026), three channel 4k looped video, 5 min 38 sec, 1 x 75 inch screen 2 x 43 inch screens, aluminium frames, aluminium relief in six parts, 190 x 400 x 20 cm; Zein Majali, FED (2024), cast aluminium; John Humphreys, Alien Autopsy (1995), silicon, metal, 160 x 45 x 30 cm.
