News/Research

SRL Featuring Robots by Eric Paulos at Marlborough Contemporary and in the News

11 Jan, 2018

SRL Featuring Robots by Eric Paulos at Marlborough Contemporary and in the News

Mark Pauline and the Survival Research Laboratory is exhibiting “Inconsiderate Fantasies of Negative Acceleration Characterized by Sacrifices of a Non-Consensual Nature" at the Marlborough Contemporary Gallery in New York. The exhibition, the first solo presentation by SRL in a commercial gallery, comprises eight kinetic sculptures dating from 1986 to the present, along with video documentation of past performances in which these machines were engaged. And our very own Eric Paulos was involved in the creation of one of the first of these robots, the Big Walker!

From the gallery:

Arising from San Francisco’s emergent technological revolution in the late 1970’s, SRL—an amorphous crew of indeterminate number led by the visionary Mark Pauline—can be seen to represent a robust counterpoint to the convenience app and frictionless capitalism that Silicon Valley has enabled. While the tech sector has naturally moved toward smaller, faster and cleaner Pauline has maintained a visceral, humanized vision of machines. His robots are built from raw and battered steel and lurch, shudder and smash rather than gliding effortlessly. They are inefficient and fallible, and sacrifice themselves as readily as they destroy.

Articles on this amazing exhibition have appeared in the New York Times, Artsy, and Vice's Garage.

The exhibition runs from January 6 to February 10 at the Marlborough Contemporary Gallery.

You can see videos of SRL at work below!