Art Machines – Machine Art

«The relationship between art and machine is not necessarily a harmonious one, and so coupling the two terms seems contradictory. If one accepts the general assumption that artists, not machines, are the originators and creators of works of art, then the discrepancy between the two could not be greater.» The exhibition starts with works by Jean Tinguely, but the interest in art producing machines is far older, since the intertwined history of art and of the machine harks back to Antiquity and continues through the ages down to the present day. Numerous exhibitions in the past have investigated the relationship between art and the machine, but here the focus is neither on the beauty of the machines nor of the objects that they produce; rather, the exhibition presents works of art that are at the same time machines that produce in turn their own artworks. These machines possess a processual character that combines machine, act of production, user and product. The relationship between work of art and viewer is examined in all the works without always being at the source of the latter. The viewer is not always directly involved in the production process, but, nevertheless, always gains an insight in the production and is thus led to reflect on the issue as to where the work of art begins. The artist will never succeed in disappearing permanently from the work of art. The machine can produce art without his presence but never without his ideas. (K. Dohm and H. Stahlhut, Art Machines Machine Art, exh. cat., Kehrer-Verlag, 2007/8) List of artists: Pawel Althamer, Michael Beutler, Angela Bulloch, Olafur Eliasson, Tue Greenfort, Damien Hirst, Rebecca Horn, Jon Kessler, Tim Lewis, Lia, Miltos Manetas, Roxy Paine, Steven Pippin, CorneLia Sollfrank, Jean Tinguely, Antoine Zgraggen, Andreas Zybach