George Clinton: Mothership

Mariane Ibrahim is pleased to present Mothership, George Clinton’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, on view from July 25 to September 5, 2026. Centering on the iconic spacecraft that in 1976 transformed Parliament-Funkadelic concerts into interstellar journeys, the exhibition coincides with the 50th anniversary of the Mothership: a visionary creation that, in Clinton’s words, took “the ’hood into outer space.” 

George Clinton remains one of the most unfailingly eccentric figures in the history of music, renowned for extravagant performances in which stage production and sonic production are used to psychedelically transport his viewers. As ambitious as it was improbable, the Mothership – a silver, pyramid-shaped vessel that landed on-stage with Clinton himself as Dr. Funkenstein on board – captured the imagination of Parliament’s audiences by bringing psychedelic culture into the mainstream at a moment when the space race remained an ongoing cultural obsession. Drawing from an eclectic constellation of references, Clinton’s paintings construct dreamlike worlds in which the logic of a non-narrative typology gives way to rhythm and vibration. Across the canvases, void-like forms recalling the silhouette of the Mothership hover at the center of the picture plane. Untethered from ground or horizon, these suspended forms occupy indeterminate fields where space is rendered not as empty expanse but as a living, psychic terrain in which possibility continuously circulates. 

Across the paintings, Clinton deploys a vivid palette of electric pinks, saturated blues, and radiant yellows that has become synonymous with the visual culture surrounding Parliament-Funkadelic and its Afrofuturist imagination. Suggestive of celestial atmospheres and synthetic light, these colors transform pictorial space into an environment of continual emergence. Together with the recurring form of the Mothership, they produce a visual language in which cosmic travel becomes synonymous to Clinton’s music and performances. 

These distilled forms and colors find their counterpart in The Mothership (2026), a monumental sculpture created specifically for this exhibition. While it is nowhere close to the size of the ship Clinton performed on stage with, the object is charged with the same symbolism. Where the paintings reduce the spacecraft to an almost archetypal presence, the sculpture restores its spectacular physicality. Occupying the center of the gallery, the maximalist vessel anchors the exhibition while emitting sonic frequencies that reverberate throughout the space, activating the gallery as an immersive environment and inviting viewers into the sensory universe that has long defined Clinton’s stardom.

Alongside the artworks, archival materials trace the conception and cultural impact of what The New York Times famously described as rock’s “wildest stage prop.” Together, the paintings, sculpture, and ephemera reveal that the Mothership has never been simply a concert prop or a relic of music history. Rather, it is an evolving mythology, one that has continually expanded across music, performance, and visual art to imagine new worlds where fantasy becomes a vehicle for liberation.