Rebekah Templeton Contemporary Art recently opened its newest solo show by Derek Frech, the Philadelphia-based artist and co-director of Extra Extra gallery. The exhibit is called “Holodeck,” named after the virtual reality environment of “Star Trek” fame. The work in the show hails from an imagined dystopian future where nature is viewed nostalgically through technological simulation.

Frech uses a combination of objects, video projections and still images to construct his take on the perhaps not-too-distant future. Of particular interest is the video loop “Metamorphism of Limestone into Marble.” The movement of this piece attracts attention immediately but also because it takes up almost the entire wall to the left of the entrance. Starting with a picture of a light brown hunk of rock, the stone begins to warp and expand. By the end of the short loop, the rock has distorted and morphed into the entire frame. The name, of course, acknowledges the process of metamorphic rock whereby one type of material is slowly turned into another over the course of many millions of years. Here, the transformation takes place in hardly a minute. This is somewhat telling of contemporary attention spans or oversimplified ideas. Interestingly enough, geology will continue its process regardless of the blip in time that the human race spends on the surface of the planet, and this is essentially the only way for humans to even conceive of such a change.

Also in the show is “Venn Diagram in 3D” which takes the idea of the common logic chart and adds a somewhat unnecessary eye-popping gimmick. In a world where every other movie is touted for its 3-D effects or cutting-edge graphics, it seems that science and logic were some of the few areas devoid of this theatricality — until now. In line with the futuristic (read: contemporary) bells and whistles of the Venn diagram, Frech also reinvents the popular Rubik’s Cube puzzle with an RGB color scheme, updating it for the age of digital images. As if this retro toy weren’t difficult enough to solve with solid blocks of color, it becomes even more maddeningly complicated in its new form.

Two other moving image works round out the show: “Fire Piece” and “Sugimoto GIF.” In “Fire Piece,” a pile of wood sits beneath an angled plate of glass. On the glass is the projection of a flame. The holographic fire doubles back on the “Holodeck” name of the exhibition but also draws to light issues of depleting resources and the strange phenomenon of faux-fireplaces. “Sugimoto GIF” is an animated GIF image of one of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s seascape photographs. Most intriguing about this piece is the dedicated URL that accompanies the artwork; if you purchase the art, you get the website.

Frech takes us into his futuristic world that is strangely reminiscent of our own. There are environmental concerns, media critiques and Internet-era updates interwoven into the imagined society that Frech presents us. When taking a reflective look at “Holodeck,” one cannot help but wonder if we are indeed finally living in the future…

Rebekah Templeton Contemporary Art is located at 173 Girard Ave. on the corner of Second and Girard; 267-519-3884.