John Roach

San Francisco-born, Brooklyn-based John Roach is a builder of contraptions. His mixed-media sculptures are mutant hybrids of out-of-date technologies and thrift-store armatures that suggest a sweet but obsessed craftsman toiling away late at night in a grimy cellar or garage somewhere in some run-down edge-of-the-metropolis. Dynamic Speaker is like a slowed-down, inelegant music box that instead of producing a sweet waltz or theme from The Godfather, makes the clunking, clicking, and scratching sounds one might expect from a poltergeist-infested farmhouse in New England. Transmissions from Beyond is an infernal machine in two parts: a mechanized pedestal proffers a series of small fans that blow the pages of a book back and forth, while a surveillance camera overhead sends the signal to a projector in another part of the gallery producing a ghostly monochromatic image of a book whose pages seem to be turning by unseen forces. Like a magician who reveals his secrets as he is attempting to mystify you, Roach’s sculptures embrace an internal contradiction of creating effect while simultaneously showing you the man behind the curtain. Nevertheless, despite the naked fragility and humor of his contraptions they continue to act upon our temporal, cultural, and experiential inclinations toward spookiness.

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