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.

At the gallery’s center, five figures form a loosely circular configuration that recalls dancers or partygoers holding hands. The shape of each figure reacts to airflow differently, which creates sometimes subtle, sometimes dramatic variations in how each one can move. Mounted on the wall at eye level, Tokener Ecstasis behaves like a scene from a picture that has literally come alive, with the brashly colored garments custom-fit to each figure strewn across the floor—as if the performers decided to mog viewers and let it all hang out.

That idea of a “living picture” runs throughout the exhibition. Other sculptures pair single moving figures with knitted forms inspired by the work of Mike Kelley, who has been an enduring influence. In Hex 1, the trunk and four arm-like appendages sway like a tree from an alien planet. In Hex 4, the body resembles a headless figure sashaying mindlessly, as if looking for someone to pay some attention.

The Breathers’ inherent contrast between movement and stillness is heightened in Tokener Gradient 1. Here five interconnected figures are aligned in a rising diagonal up the wall. Only three figures are moving; the other two are deflated and one dangles lifelessly onto the floor, where it lays alongside electrical cords arrayed in loose patterns, like the pencil marks of a drawing. This direct linking of static figures to moving ones toys with my own assumptions about what defines a Breather—most explicitly in Tokener Stasis, where there is no movement at all.

Automa Mon Amour also features models that eventually became (or have yet to become) “living,” moving Breathers. Virtually all the models on display were created before 2018, to experiment with the silhouette and shape of the figures before imbuing them with the capacity for movement. They are shown here for the first time as works in their own right. Made of muslin and other cotton fabrics and installed on specially designed wall mounts, these models draw inspiration from a variety of sources: from medieval religious carvings to the figural compositions of Michelangelo and Raphael, to biological organisms and the sewn works of Louise Bourgeois.

In Untitled (Wheel of Synth Life), models in various stages of development congregate in clusters that echo scenes of living and dying from second-century Buddhist murals. Directly opposite is Untitled (Wounder in Black), a lone black hooded figure with a subtly twisted torso and raised arms, as if ascending or surrendering. A gash made of red thread is hand-stitched on the side of the body. This model was the basis for a number of extant Breathers, and was inspired by garments from early monastic communities and by Michael Brown, who was murdered by the police in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014.

Drawing has been a consistent practice in my work. Here, I’ve tried to create portraits of the invisible and nearly immaterial substance that animates the Breathers: air. The pleasure of making the Breathers comes from the radically abstract nature of the work—creating geometric shapes and curvilinear pathways that influence airflow to make figures stiffen, sway, or gesticulate. These new drawings, with their undulating lines and arrows, visualize how flow brings the Breathers to life.