| Peters Projects has announce a curated exhibition titled MACHINA: Past, Present, Future. The work of three artists explores the evolution of technology through the human hand and its personal relationship to the machine. The exhibition, curated by Gallery Director Mark Del Vecchio, features the artists Joel Hobbie, Peter Sarkisian and John Peralta.
Machina, from Doric Greek, means “machine, tool.” However, with technology rapidly exceeding human’s own capabilities, robotic machines have far surpassed the status of “tool,” often replacing human work. Machina explores the changing relationships between humans and machines. John Peralta works with early and mid-20th century machines that began the seduction of humans and their “bot,” Peralta dissects antiquated technologies like typewriters and sewing machines, painstakingly taking them apart and arranging them with new sculptural and aesthetic value.
Santa Fe based artist Peter Sarkisian uses video projections on dimensional form to create a cross pollination of cinema and sculpture. On view will be works from Sarkisian’s Video Engines, a series of vacuum formed thermal plastic works with glowing pistons, bearings and pumps that keep us on the move as well as his Videomorphic Figures that bring robotic life to sintered 3D printed, powder coated steel and aluminum sculptures.
Joel Hobbie, also of Santa Fe, combines organic forms such as tree limbs cast in bronze with robotic machines that use facial recognition software. As the viewer approaches Hobbie’s work, limbs move and gears turn as they come to life. This site-specific piece, Neurons, takes the machine further away, separating us from the sculpture that clearly sees us and beckons to come forth but fear of what it wants make you cautious. Mechanisms of the future we can only try to understand. |
Joel Hobbie, Neurons (detail), 2018, mixed media. Courtesy of Peters Projects, Santa Fe 