Jordan Wolfson Debuts New Robot Performer at NGA

Body Sculpture depicts mature themes and generates sound levels that reach 100 decibels, the Canberra institution warned.

Jordan Wolfson will debut a new robotic work at the National Gallery of Art (NGA) on Saturday 9 December.

Body Sculpture (2023) consists of a metal cube with impressively dexterous, human-like hands and arms suspended by a chain from a rig that allows it to move up, down, left, and right.

Neither the artist nor the NGA have shared video of the work, but clues to its performance appear in the Viewer Advice section of the exhibition's website. It requires children under 15 to be accompanied by a parent or guardian, and warns that the work includes drumming and impact noises that are as loud as a motorbike.

Wolfson has used animatronics in his work before, including (Female figure) (2014), a kind of forerunner to the violent robot in the 2022 horror movie M3GAN. Writing about Wolfson's creepy marionette Coloured sculpture (2016), Artnet News said it was 'for those whose fantasy is to watch Howdy Doody be tortured.'

In 2020, The New Yorker described Wolfson's work as 'edgelord art'. In that piece, Wolfson described Body Sculpture as 'the Cube' to writer Dana Goodyear. He said it would be able to 'play the floor like an instrument', 'rape the floor', and 'beat the floor'.

'Cube can be lifted up and spun and do, like, jazz hands,' he said, asking, 'wouldn't that be fabulous?'

Speaking to the NGA in February, Wolfson used different language.

'Body Sculpture is an artwork without a moral position or "new" moral position, in that the previous artworks were trying to express something that wasn't morally or socially accepted yet,' he said.

'Instead, Body Sculpture suggests that an object can mirror your body and reinsert you into your body, assuming that you are not present in your body. I'm therefore proposing that most people at most times are not present in their minds or bodies, they are elsewhere distracted by anxiety, confusion, desires, etc,' Wolfson said.

'Fusing abstraction and figuration, the work explores the potential of sculpture as an object in space,' said the National Gallery's director, Nick Mitzevich.

'Its interacting robotic elements perform an intricate choreography that questions the intersection between human and machine, between embodiment and symbolism, and between object and viewer,' he said.

Body Sculpture will remain on view at the NGA through 28 April 2024. —[O]