The Columbia Daily Tribune
Artist rages against— and with — the machine
Our collective cultural history is littered with narratives in which mankind wrestles both literally and figuratively with the encroachment of machines. A list compiled by Time magazine last year reminded readers of several prominent examples: John Henry versus the steam engine; chess champion Garry Kasparov versus Deep Blue, the IBM computer; the astronauts who matched wits with HAL 9000 in the novel — and subsequent Stanley Kubrick film — "2001: A Space Odyssey."
One Columbia artist is engaging that narrative in a way that is slightly and more subtly subversive. Recent University of Missouri graduate Greg Orloff has gone beyond customary considerations of man versus machine to examine a conflict that's potentially more insidious and certainly hits closer to home. In his current show, "Gizmos and Gadgets," Orloff explores how mankind battles itself and its own age-old inclinations in an age of machines. Orloff's show remains on display at the MSA/GPC Craft Studio Gallery through next week.
The trajectory of Orloff's creative corpus has long been tangled up in the conventions and concepts of science fiction as well as the sorts of practices and processes that would be well-suited to the pages of Popular Mechanics. A fantastical time machine he constructed was displayed at Artlandish Gallery; other sculptures and assemblage works have been showcased at MU, the Columbia Art League and True/False Film Fest venues. By utilizing found objects and using the tools and techniques of metalworkers, Orloff's pieces both appeal to fine-art appreciators and force a moment of reckoning for those who would avoid galleries, judging that scene as too highbrow.
In "Gizmos and Gadgets," Orloff transcends the popular steampunk movement with a collection of works that command viewers' attention and contain remnants of numerous eras and epochs. Walking around the gallery, viewers are amused and amazed by artfully constructed jetpacks and rayguns, some of which bear names such as "Alpha Vaporizer Model 2.0" and "Sonic Disintegrator." Orloff has constructed whimsical robotlike figures and smallish insects with gilded thoraxes. A wall lined with metallic masks and several sets of giant wings scattered throughout suggests the costume of a future age or simply a futuristic theme party.
Despite the show's lighthearted title and the rather quirky nature of the pieces displayed, Orloff is indeed grappling with some very serious, deep-seated emotions and ideas. The show, in part, is a consideration of the artist as inventor or mad scientist — a thread Orloff sees throughout fiction, film and myth. The work — and his artist statement — implores viewers to think about the powers of science and industry, both for good and for devastation. In some ways, as his statement said, his "fiction-based sculptures suggest nostalgia and simultaneously anxiety about a historical era of radical new theories, technologies and sciences."
Perhaps most insightful and incisive is the ways in which Orloff beckons viewers to consider the very apparatuses they've constructed, even if their hands have never closed around a tool or their fingers have never sifted through a pile of gears. In both his assortment of masks and pieces of body armor, Orloff comments on how we can "often adorn as well as obscure" our "true identity" and create "a digital face as seen in Facebook and other social networking media." In this way, Orloff suggests that perhaps it is not the machine itself man needs to worry about but the ways in which machines have coaxed out the darker aspects of our human nature.
Light and dark, humor and horror, past and future, wireless technology and our inner wiring — all these juxtapositions make Orloff's work worth engaging and drive home the truth that, no matter where we go or how far we advance as a society, He is an artist who is going places and might arrive there slightly ahead of the pack. "Gizmos and Gadgets" will be open to the public from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. tomorrow through Thursday. To learn more about the show and Orloff's other work, visit goorloff.blogspot.com orcraftstudio.missouri.edu.
Reach Aarik Danielsen at 573-815-1731 or e-mail ajdanielsen@columbiatribune.com.
This article was published on page C2 of the Sunday, May 20, 2012 edition of The Columbia Daily Tribune.Click here to Subscribe.
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