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Nemo Gould

Kinetic sculptor Nemo Gould builds robots and creatures from salvaged material—discarded gadgets, broken tools, and other objects that have lost their value in daily life. Gould’s artistic vocabulary is steeped in nostalgia for outdated machinery and the fantastic realm of comic books and science fiction. His sculptures are characters with personalities suggested by the sum of their carefully re-contextualized parts.

Central to Gould’s process is his ability to see the aesthetic value of the obsolete and create a new meaning for it. Drawing on a vast and ever changing collection of discarded materials stored in his Berkeley studio, Gould   describes his process as putting together a puzzle—characters evolve as he deconstructs and reassembles parts to create a new whole. Then he designs ways for the viewer to activate each sculpture—with the press of a button, the turn of a knob, or through motion detection. Gould wants the viewer to engage with the artwork first and then slowly realize what it is made of, what he describes as "the slow reveal of familiarity."

Reception May 27, 5–7 p.m.

Gallery 555
555 12th Street, Oakland, CA
Lobby. Hours 7am – 6pm.
located in downtown Oakland
Open and free to the public. BART, AC Transit and Wheelchair accessible