MechanicAl AnimAl
January 16 – February 25, 2025
An exhibition of artists whose work incorporates a dialogue with mechanised production.
Against a backdrop of the new digital ®evolution and approaching ninety years since the publication of Walter Benjamin’s seminal essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ we present an exhibition tracing the legacy of Benjamin’s prophetic work, and reconsider it in the present moment.
This selection of international artists from different generations maintain a mechanical leaning and address automation in their own ways. Often second-nature to their praxis, the cogs of tool-based art making grind away against the sleek netherworld of the digital non-space. With roots firmly set in the industrial revolution Mechanical Animal nevertheless reflects new-world possibilities of hi-tech novelty and aesthetic innovation. Bridging major historical moment’s, the exhibition grapples with the stubborn, cumbersome, and eternally unavoidable now.
Harry Woodrow, HCTWJ_09, 2024, Acrylic on MDF panel, 59 1/10 × 59 1/10 × 2 4/5 in | 150 × 150 × 7 cm
The scattergun semantics of visual art production today is further confused by the advent of the digital byte. Adding the means of eternal variation by computer code to the possibility of endless reproduction by way of the machine may lead us to believe, if you follow Benjamin’s thesis, that the original beauty of the unique work of art is now forever lost and irretrievable.
MechanicAl AnimAl posits an open question then: has the aura of the original dissipated with the event of simulation, or has it simply shifted positions, away from the object and into the variations that we derive?
Douglas Davis’s sequel ‘The work of art in the age of digital reproduction (1991-1995)’ offers an update:
‘Here is where the aura resides. In the originality of the moment
when we see, hear, read, repeat, revise. Not in the thing itself.’
So, aura has taken on a new mobile home, popping up in our interactions with art whether IRL or on screen. The focus shifts to the encounter of the viewer, the artwork simply a conduit of potential sensation, validated by user experience. ‘MechanicAl AnimAl’ is conceived as an online exhibition, counter-intuitively opposing the natural urge to experience in person that which piques our curiosity.
Ross Hansen, Reclaimed Colour Chart, 2022, Gesso, structura and pigment on linen, 39 2/5 × 31 1/2 in | 100 × 80 cm
Chris Cassimatis, Regulator 6F9464, 2024, Acrylic on canvas over panel, 36 × 36 in | 91.5 × 91.5 cm
The reductionist screen flattens the surface, homogenises the hue, and eases the workload of the eye with its backlit lumens. This equalisation, as dispiriting as it may seem to those who mourn the pre-screen age, can more optimistically be seen as a leveller of the proverbial playing field, a democratic point of access, free from the social firewall of the intimidating white cube.
Wherever the location of this mysterious concept of aura in our day and age it seems clear that the modern ‘MechanicAl AnimAl’ absorbs technological interactions into their practice with ease – another tool in the virtual toolbox of the creative mind. Technology is both subject and object in this manifestation, something that carries the future on its back like an intrepid pioneer into the rocky terrain of tomorrow.
Either way, we hope that the cult of beauty, the authenticity of aura, and the friction of endless variation will warm the viewer’s heart and satisfy the users need for novelty, allure, surprise, and visual stimulation in whatever form you choose to consume your media.
©Shane Bradford 2024