April 20 – May 19, 2001

Opening Reception: Friday, April 20, 2001, 6:00-8:00pm

Pete Beeman’s mechanical sculptures are life-size solutions to basic engineering queries, such as how to make the improbable stand up, how to harness the untamed, and to make the static become dynamic. Beeman invites the viewer to interact with his work, in order to bring function and motion to these otherwise inert forms. The choreography of the Prototypes’, once animated, is at one moment elegant and graceful, the next spastic, clumsy, and awkward; the Prototypes’ aggressive physicality and overbearing scale are replaced with grace and dynamism. These extravagant, and somewhat functionless works, often mock the notion of utility.