Machines on Paper

Exhibition: Jan 8 2011 - Feb 5 2011
Location: Antenna Gallery, 3161 Burgundy Street, New Orleans, LA 70117

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MACHINES ON PAPER – Works by James W. Goedert

Machines On Paper is a reflection of my experiences as a member of the working class and a means to voice my concern about how our society operates in its natural world. As animals, humans are unique in the fact that we cater our surroundings to fit our needs. Humans don’t generally live in trees unless of course they are dead, square, and painted in pastels. We are constantly destroying and reformatting. It is only quite recently that we have taken widespread acknowledgment of our collective impact on our natural world. And so we have gone green and we are in awe of our ingenuity.

My works use machines as an intermediary to tell the story of our struggle. I use machines thats’ original purpose is to alter our environment to our aesthetic, and allow them to fix what they have broken from nature’s perspective. A large part of my work is a humorous attempt to put the awareness of nature into the machines and let them generate what they had intended to destroy.

This idea has grown into an attempt to personify machines and objects, to allow them introspection and vanity. “A Car That We Can All Agree On” is the largest example of this idea. And like most of the machines it requires some amount of human generation and direction.

Through the nuances of their mechanical drives, random oscillations, and broad surfaces all of the machines are able to reproduce, reflect, reformat and create. And when all is said and done, it is possible for machines to be as self-referencing as their human operators. — James W. Goedert

For more information visit: jwgoedert.tumblr.com or scadnola.com.

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