Jean-Pierre Gauthier: Machines At Play @ Akron Art Museum 9/27 This is the first U.S. showing of his award-winning work. Prepare to have a reaction when these kinetic (moving) sculptural works react to you as you approach them. The pieces are fitted with sensors, so that when approached by a viewer, they start to move or make sounds, or both. The first five pieces you encounter (Skater, Cockroach, Dragon Fly, Spring and Spider) begin to “crawl” up the walls, dragged along by triangulated pulleys and retractable dog leashes, scraping the wall underneath them with a piece of graphite, creating its own shaded patterns behind them; a combined effort of your presence, the artists intension and the "machines" action, or reaction...

A piece called Rut is a room-sized snarl of conduit, along which are strung found objects that react to sound in the room by moving and sounding out chirps or rhythms, which are then amplified by other found object like funnels and buckets. The effect is like being in a man-made frog pond. You are not sure where the next sound will come from, or when it will happen. Another approach by Gauthier is to create marionette-like machines. In three pieces called Dislocated Star, Not a Cube and Not a House, pulleys on the ceiling are suspending red or blue broom sticks at the their ends, the sticks are filed with dried lentils, so that when they are tugged and twisted to reveal new patterns, they chatter as well. Beats of Butterflies rounds out the exhibit. This foil-tape-covered piano comes to life as it senses you entering the room, banging out a reactive racket.

While Machines At Play is worth the drive to Akron, leave yourself enough time to review the rest of the museum. Of special note is a room full of disturbing photomontages from the magazine AIZ which was an anti-Nazi publication created by German graphic designer John Heartfield during the 1930s and 1940s. Other pieces on display as part of their collection highlights include works by such art starts as Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Chuck Close and Donald Judd, as well as a moving shrine-like exhibit by Doris Salcedo which remembers victims of her native Columbia's civil and drug wars.

Jean-Piere Gauthier's Machines At Play is on display at the Akron Art Museum through January 4, 2009. Visit the museum online at http://www.akronartmuseum.org.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Carol Drummond carolATdrummondesign.com
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