SEED
Brian Oakes
September 4th — October 13th, 2024
Press Release
SEED Checklist
It’s [You]. [You] are the input for the generator. [You] are the seed. The output generated from [You] will become the logistic network: [You]r Box. In a week, [You]r Box has predicted that [You] will need a table, and it’s already waiting for [You]. In a year [You] will need a steel chair to go with the table, anticipated based on [You]r purchase of dog food, more of which is already in [You]r Box because eventually [You] will Place Your Order. The ore to make the steel to make the chair [You] will receive in a year’s time is in the ground now, but the necessary mining rig is currently in pieces, on a boat, crossing the ocean to [You]r port
Brian Oakes (they/them b. 1995) is a Brooklyn-based sculptor presenting SEED, their first solo exhibition with the gallery. Everything starts with organic processes, even industrialization and its decline. To seed is to put creation into motion and refers to any input used to initialize a generative process. The artist’s mechanized artworks explore a commodities journey from conception, production, and logistics, finally landing at display. Oakes is uplifting the chain of events necessary in production, including the use of automated markets, raw materials, by-products, their refinement, and distribution, investigating how worth is determined as objects progress along this chain. Not all seeds become flowers. The exhibition proposes that within hyper-mass individualization, those living under capitalism are the 'SEED' that is being sewn and the world is generated for us and around us.
Consumers have never had more access to industrial processes than now. Oakes’ work is necessitated by these recent changes in mass production that allows the ability to create individual, singular, objects through factory production. Predictive algorithms are the lifeblood of all logistics systems. Utilizing these networks of divination is to commune between the individual and systemic desires. The artist is inserting themself into industrial processes inherited from previous generations of production, exploiting established systems to produce work with the veneer of function that address the process of refinement.
ASRS 1 (2024), which stands for Automated Storage and Retrieval System, is a miniaturized sorting machine engineered by the artist modeled loosely after the real systems that are being adopted by massive distribution centers in ports globally. The sculpture contains other sculptures, which are carefully sorted according to opaque internal logic. The pallets of smaller artworks depicting placid scenes, relic displays, and miniatures. A kinetic work, things are being stored, retrieved and displayed in a ghostly manner. The work proposes a post-human labor consumption pattern that props up contemporary survival, or the absence of touch in industrial sorting.
The artworks in Seed include the raw materials necessary for creating circuits and digital systems. Display Case 2 (A Garden), is a wall mounted display case containing: 18 homemade rubies and 18 copper sulfate crystal seeds. Though they appear naturally occurring, the rubies in the display are created by the artist from common materials. This alchemical process troubles the inherent value of the precious stones and synthetic processes. What is more valuable or essential? A ruby produced by an artist, or formed by the earth itself?
With Seed, the artist’s specific interest is exploring the phenomenon of hyper-mass individualization. In general industrial strategy has turned away from abundant generic production. Now, 100,000 individual chairs are produced to 100,000 individual targeted consumers, cultivated and convinced through algorithms, AI, and marketing. Fabricators want to visualize the quarry, the factory and the distribution center nearest to the consumer while acknowledging the unseen predictive coding that facilitates the system in its entirety. Oakes utilizes technocraft, global logistic networks, and the refinement process of precious materials required by modern technology to realize this change in production strategy visual.
Translation provided by DeepL
Brian oakes is an interdisciplinary sculptor based in New York. His spatial investigations manifest through means of technocraft such as open source agendas, DIY materiality, satellites, nuclear culture, piracy, and global-political transparencies in outer space. Rhode Island School of Design, MFA.
INSTALLATION
WORKS
Brian Oakes
ASRS 1, 2024
Aluminum extrusion, acrylic, custom hardware, cameras, monitors, 3d printed parts in ABS and Resin, custom PCB’s, motors, wood, foam, paint, glue, thread, images printed on paper
Brian Oakes
Encryption Device 1, 2024
Aluminum extrusion, acrylic, fans, lava lamps, 3d printed parts in PLA, custom hardware, custom cables, custom PCB’s, Lava lamps, motors, light bulbs, power supplies, belts
Brian Oakes
Display Case 1 (A Body), 2024
A wall mounted display case containing: ten homemade rubies, four wisdom teeth (courtesy of the artist), two shards of vivianite (sourced from a seller in Brazil who claims these were “hand selected from a graveyard”), a sculpture depicting a skull made of 20 AWG copper wire encased in a piezoelectric crystal (also known as Rochelle Salt or potassium sodium tartrate, characterized by their pyroelectricity property in which these growths can generate a temporary voltage when heated, cooled, or experience mechanical pressure), eight chunks of fordite (also known as Detroit Agate or Motor City Agate (which are formed from the buildup of thousands of layers of automotive paint slag on tracks and skids in auto plants) carved and tumbled into minimalist shapes, three Campo del Cielo meteorite fragments, two Prophecy Pseudomorphs (made up of hematite, whose name is derived from the Greek word for “blood”), a chunk of shungite and the selenite wand that protected its passage to the artist, a plastic army man in the throngs of a violent act cast in piezoelectric crystals (see above note), a small totem made of wax from dozens of Babybel 8.5oz cheese snack collected during (to be cast in zinc plated copper legs of every component clipped onto the floor of the artists studio between 2020 and 2024)
Brian Oakes
Display Case 2 (A Garden), 2024
A wall mounted display case containing: 18 homemade rubies and 18 copper sulfate crystal seeds
Brian Oakes
Display Case 3 (A Mind), 2024
A wall mounted display case containing: 5 copper sulfate crystals grown by the artist over the course of one month, a specimen of electrically induced copper crystals (after one month of growth), two “Devil’s Heads” seed pods (also known as the fruit of Trapa natans, a plant that has the common name “water chestnut”), 4 freshwater pearls, two homemade rubies, one stone of baltic amber with 5 Insect trapped 40-60 million years ago, one dried branch of red coral
Brian Oakes
Display Case 4 (A Breath), 2024
A wall mounted display case containing: three homemade rubies, two copper sulfate crystal seeds, one “Devil’s Heads” seed pod (also known as the fruit of Trapa natans, a plant that has the common name “water chestnut”), a CD4017 CMOS Decade Counter with 10 Decoded Outputs in the DIP16 format that was improperly connected and exploded, 3 piezoelectric crystal seeds (also known as Rochelle Salt or potassium sodium tartrate, characterized by their pyroelectricity property in which these growths can generate a temporary voltage when heated, cooled, or experience mechanical pressure), a chunk of shungite, and 5 freshwater pearls.
Brian Oakes
PALLET 1 (House on Hill), 2024
Oak pallet, custom printed circuit boards, foam, balsa wood, denim, sand.
Brian Oakes
PALLET 2 (Pennies from Heaven), 2024
Oak pallet, pennies, laser cut acrylic, black ribbon
Brian Oakes
PALLET 3 (Dilletante Tradition), 2024
Oak pallet, wooden panel, colored pencil
Brian Oakes
PALLET 4 (Fallen Tree), 2024
Oak pallet, custom printed circuit boards, foam, balsa wood, sand
Brian Oakes
PALLET 5 (Mechanic Shop), 2024
Oak pallet, custom printed circuit boards, foam, plastic, balsa wood
Brian Oakes
PALLET 6 (Jesus Saves), 2024
Oak pallet, custom printed circuit boards, foam, balsa wood, sand, wire
Brian Oakes
PALLET 7 (Ruby Display), 2024
Oak pallet, fifteen home-made rubies, laser cut acrylic
Brian Oakes
PALLET 8 (Seed Display), 2024
Oak pallet, laser cut acrylic, copper, shungite, fordite, freshwater pearl, copper sulfate crystal seed, piezoelectric crystal seed, selenite, petrified amber
Brian Oakes
PALLET 9 (BLADE STUDY), 2024
Oak pallet, custom printed circuit boards, foam,
Brian Oakes
PALLET 10 (Quarry), 2024
Oak pallet, foam, sand, plaster
Brian Oakes
PALLET 11 (Box Containing Bladeless Knife, No Handle), 2024
Oak pallet, laser cut acrylic, bladeless knife with no handle
Brian Oakes
PALLET 12 (Crystalline Figures), 2024
Oak pallet, army men cast in piezoelectric crystals, laser cut acrylic, black ribbon