MB&F M.A.D. Gallery Showcases Machine Lights by Frank Buchwald

A glance at Frank Buchwald’s Machine Lights shows a dozen mechanical lamps. A second look reveals a dynamic aspect reminiscent of science fiction elements. A third look discredits the previous and ends in an astounded remark: it’s art.

The Maximilian Büsser & Friends (MB&F) Mechanical Art Devices (M.A.D.) Gallery hosts this set of lamps scrupulously crafted by the German sculptor. Each piece, conveniently named Type 1 to Type 12, is avant-garde metalwork meticulously fashioned and polished to supremacy by untiring hands.

These hands would not even submit to the computer for digital designing, as is the forward trend. As such, Buchwald creates only 10 masterpieces a year in his Berlin atelier. “The attentive observer will not fail to notice that the Machine Lights live from a source other than from the hand of man. Although I have worked for over ten years on them, I don’t really regard them as my own work: they are beings in their own nature,” Buchwald said.

M.A.D. Gallery founder Maximilian Büsser had the pleasure of witnessing this lamp Midas at work. “Frank Buchwald’s Machine Lights typify the mechanico-artistic excellence which forms the cornerstone of the M.A.D. Gallery,” Büsser said. “Frank creates machines that give light, not to give light, where his craft transcends a practical purpose and his creations well and truly assume the status of artworks.”

The collection merits the exposure at M.A.D. Gallery because of the artist’s unparalleled passion uninhibited by conventionality. The lamps are a creative blending of brass, burnished steel, textile cables and retro-futuristic light bulbs. Each production has 200 individual components.

It was a only decade ago that Buchwald devoted all his energy to the artistic creation of Machine Lights. “I have the feeling that the Machine Lights now portray what I imagine them to,” he said. “I think that they have now reached the right level of completeness and perfection.”

Photo credit: MB&F

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