Arthur Ganson's Machines

Arthur Ganson is an American sculptor, inventor and award-winning toy designer. His exhibition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Museum presented sculpture works embodying clattering contraptions of wires, gears and pulleys. However Ganson's machines are a lot more than just clever gadgets. The art part comes in the way his mechanical gestures so intuitively and eloquently convey human feelings. Wriggling inchworms, mincing feather dusters, Kabuki-dancing miniature plastic swords. Ganson's work celebrates life with a sense of wonderment and humour that's rare in mechanical scultpure. His 'Machine with Oil' spurts grease on itself at four minute intervals adding an erotic and suggestive dimension to his work. Nicholas Capasso, the curator of Ganson's first one-person museum show in 1993 at the DeCordova Museum & Sculpture Park in Lincoln, stated that he was 'astounded that someone could make a machine with such nuanced and complex emotional resonances. Anyone can make a machine that waves, but only Arthur can make a machine that waves good-bye. There's a big difference.'