Arthur Ganson, title and date unavailable
Arthur Ganson, Machine with Wishbone, date unavailable
MIT’s Sculpture of Arthur Ganson exhibition is one of the best shows I’ve seen all year, in part because I was expecting to see a robotics exhibition that turned out to be fine art, and in part because Ganson’s antics float in that extremely rare space of being technically bewildering while simultaneously poetic.
Seen above: tenderly engineered, hand-crafted machines allow a chair to dance on top of a rock, a cat be smacked by another chair and a wishbone (as in chicken) to walk down a track. In each work the movement is precise and smooth, the obvious result of much labor and thought. The mechanics are not “the usual mechanics” either: each mechanical intersection begs consideration.
Ganson is an engineer’s engineer.
The bar is now raised for kinetic sculpture. Each artwork — and their are approximately 20 in the room — holds you 10 times longer than usual and keeps you coming back to look all over again.
Kinetic sculptors: it’ time to buy a ticket to Boston. Exhibition is “ongoing.”
Arthur Ganson, title and date unavailable
Thanks for sharing the pictures and videos of the MIT exhibit – I definitely got a kick out of it. Best
Sure thing, thanks!