• solving man ray's obstruction
  • solving man ray's obstruction
  • solving man ray's obstruction
  • solving man ray's obstruction, 2012

solving man ray's obstruction, 2012

maple, stainless steel rod, bearings, bushings, powder coated aluminum, motor, clutch, custom electronics
approx. 16' diameter
mechanical design: Automation FX
machining: Paul Cahill
edition of 2

solving man ray's obstruction is a playful response to Man Ray’s sculpture obstruction originally constructed from wooden clothes hangers in 1920. Man Ray used arithmetic progression to build his pyramid mobile. In this reinterpretation, measurements were recalculated and adjusted to allow for the notion that if all the wooden hangers were horizontally aligned, they would never hit each other when set in motion. solving man ray's obstruction frees the impasse that was inherent in Man Ray's original sculpture and allows for movement and transformation to occur. The scale of the new sculpture made in maple is vastly increased from the original Man Ray work. In order for movement to occur each layer of hangars is approx. half the size of the layer before. This work is a part of a trilogy recently titled afterworks (itself a play on afterwards) that playfully looks at three male modernist artists, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp and attempts to address the legacy of their presence from a female artists perspective.

Exhibition History

2014   relay. University of Waterloo Gallery, Waterloo, Ontario. Curated by Ivan Jurakic.
2012   solving man ray’s obstruction. Olga Korper Gallery, Toronto, Ontario.