Automa Mon Amour

Greene Naftali is pleased to present PAUL CHAN's Automa Mon Amour, featuring new kinetic sculptures, models, and works on paper in the artist's seventh solo exhibition at the gallery. From the artist: The philosopher and polymath Gottfried Leibniz used automa to describe an immaterial and self-moving substance. Words such as "automation" and the like are derived from this Latin term. But whereas modern automation suggests a mindless, mechanical process—and now, increasingly, the slop from AI bots and agents—Leibniz's automa captures the idea that what is genuinely self-propelling and spontaneous is both mindful and spiritual in nature. In his writings, Leibniz speculated that the soul is empowered like "a spiritual machine," since it acts and changes on its own, directing the motion and behavior of all that it comes in contact with. Leibniz was not the only philosopher who viewed the "soul" or "spirit" as mechanisms: He was just the most forward-thinking. The notion of a "ghost in the machine" is part of this intellectual legacy. As is, I would argue, the insufferable idea that the living must toil endlessly and mindlessly like machinery if they are to move through life at all. For over ten years I have been at work on a series called the Breathers, which draws heavily from the contradictions born from this line of thinking. These latest Breathers collapse art historical differences between figuration and abstraction, positing what a work that makes no distinction between sculpture, performance, and the moving image might look like. I've described them as "clothing for spirits," and they have led me to reflect on the relationships that bind animation, senses of enlivenment, and visual art. Automa Mon Amour is a love letter to these questions.