October 24 - November 28, 2020
A solo exhibition featuring work by Todd Dunning.
From the gallery:
“Exhibition Statement
Gray Contemporary’s performance of Translator knows you’re there.
Translator is made up of Roto self-aware sculptures. They’re busy doing what they want. They weren’t asked to come here, they’re not pre-programmed so they just do their own stuff. They’re made of aerospace materials with brains as well as muscles.
They may or may not care to make a connection with you. Because Rotos move and communicate mostly with themselves they don’t always acknowledge the viewer or the environment. They just wait until they feel like it.
Is it that important for you to wait to find out?
There is a moment when your Roto catches your attention, communicates and motions to you but it might not be today at all. You’re either known, unknown or ignored. You’ll feel which it is and carry on.
But the worst is to be ghosted. You keep guessing and staying for reasons that get thinner. Telling yourself it’s happening right then out of optimism.
A Roto has no such hopefulness. After you leave you may have been reached out to, or just thought so.
Artist
Todd Dunning www.todddunning.com is a pioneering kinetic sculptor in San Francisco. The Silicon Valley
resident’s work is highly unusual and original.
His pieces are more organism than machine, moving powerfully and intelligently like a living creature. “They
perform for you, not the artist,” says Dunning. “When a piece starts up for the first time it’s an incredible,
breathless moment”.
Dunning’s artistic goal and medium is the “living sculpture”. Simple forms that move smoothly and organically
characterize his works – often described as a “mesmerizing” and “enthralling”. Color, technique and surface
are less important than the calculated decisions and animated movement we know from living creatures. Their
motion is self-determined, never machine-like, and always different.
From his early welded mechanical steel sculptures evocative of Tinguely and David Smith in early 2000s,
Dunning felt the need to break free of the limitations of the kinetic genre. “Celebrating the mechanism is fine if
you like mechanisms”, he says. His new works belie the technology behind them so that the audience can draw
their own conclusions from an abstract work that chooses what to do on its own.
Gray Contemporary
For more information, call 713.862.4425, email [email protected], or visit
www.graycontemporary.com.”
On View: October 24, 2020 | 12–5 pm
3508 Lake Street
Houston, 77098 TX
713-862-4425
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