DAVID MEDALLA

Conceived in the early 1960s, Medalla’s Cloud Canyons, popularly known as Bubble Machines, are considered his signature body of work. Composed of basins and tubes through which water and soap are continuously pumped, the sculptures generate slow, un- repeatable formations of foam that rise and dissolve in real time.

Medalla described them as “auto-creative,” a term coined in dialogue with fellow Signals co-founder Gustav Metzger’s “au- to-destructive” art. Metzger called Medalla “the first master of auto-creative art.” In his 1965 Mmmmmmm Manifesto, Medalla wrote that his sculptures would “breathe, perspire, cough, laugh, yawn, smile, wink, pant, dance, walk, crawl.”

Recent institutional surveys at the Hammer Museum, Los Ange- les (2024), and Tate Modern, London (2025), reflect Medalla’s growing recognition within the history of kinetic and participatory art. Central to his legacy was Signals London, the gallery and journal he co-founded in 1964, which became a meeting point for an international generation of artists.

Paris was among the cities that shaped David Medalla’s practi- ce. In 1960, philosopher Gaston Bachelard introduced Medalla’s first performance in France, staged at the Academy of Raymond Duncan, brother of the dancer Isadora Duncan. Years later, the poet Louis Aragon, co-founder of Surrealism, introduced another of Medalla’s performances. Paris remained one of the cities, along with London and New York, between which Medalla moved and worked for over six decades. He lectured at the Sorbonne. His work has been presented across the city’s institutions, including L’informe: mode d’emploi, curated by Yves-Alain Bois and Ro- salind Krauss at the Centre Pompidou, and Live/Life, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist at the Musée d’Art Moderne, both in 1996, as well as at the Jeu de Paume in 2013.

Because each Bubble Machine sculpture must be specially ins- talled and operated with water and soap, public presentations of Medalla’s work remain rare. Le Désir Cinétique... offers visitors in Paris the opportunity to see one of these kinetic sculptures in motion, alongside a broader archive of the artist’s six-decade practice.