The shiny, threatening forms that have recently arrived in the Frist Center's Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery are equally compelling, disturbing and provocative. U-Ram Choe's kinetic sculptures seem to be only intricate machines until they reveal themselves to be large, threatening insect-like forms possessing an eerie autonomy. The sculptures undulate in a way that mimics swimming or flying, leaving a viewer grasping at that increasingly fine line — disappearing more and more these days — between automated, robotic animation and synthetic consciousness. While Choe's sculptures combine formal beauty with irony and humor, it's ultimately the intricate pseudoscientific framework that gives his pieces their appropriate context: as imagined life forms, not just kick-ass props from the greatest heavy metal video you never saw.
Feb. 19-May 16, 2010
