Although I didn’t grow up during their heyday, I’m a bit of a sucker for that retro, 70s sci-fi aesthetic. You know, original-series Star Trek, Silent Running, Alien, that sort of thing. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Keith Goldman has perfectly encapsulated that (as he so often does) in his latest creation. The build itself is impressive, but the composition is particularly stellar. Keith says the off-kilter angle was deliberately chosen to evoke the unsettling intrigue of a comic book cover. In fact, all it needs is a title in a dramatic font, some catchy quotes, and a little ’50c’ sticker to make it look exactly like that.
The sense of scale and position is quite deceptive: initially, I thought we were looking up at some massive space cathedral, but the little white trophy ‘nanofigures’ give us our reference. This means that that skeleton in the glowing green cell, tank, pod, or whatever it’s in must be enormous. That’s what I love about this piece. No backstory, but by poring over the details you start asking questions which quickly set the imagination running. What facility is this, and where do all those tunnels go? What’s in the yellow pods? What (or who) was that skeleton? Who are the figures gathered around it? Most importantly, why is it there? Somehow, I don’t get the impression this is a zoo…