The “Border Crossers” exhibition focuses on MacMurtrie’s recent inflatable projects: “Border Crossers” and “Dual Pneuma,” including one of his robotic “Border Crossing” sculptures, along with videos and drawings of the “Border Crossers” and “Dual Pneuma.” 

Both projects channel MacMurtrie’s aesthetic and political concerns into speculative interventions at or along the U.S.-Mexico border. While his “Border Crossers” inflate over the border fence from both sides at once as a gesture of connection between two countries, the “Dual Pneuma” sculpture embodies the idea of a fluid cultural identity. “Dual Pneuma’s” imagined Fronterizx identity is distilled in its mirrored form and infinite flexibility.

Part of MacMurtrie’s time at QI will be spent working toward a “Border Crossers” performance at the San Diego/Tijuana border while continuing research and development of the “Dual Pneuma” project in conjunction with Associate Professor Mike T. Tolley and graduate students Shenglin Yang and Allyson Chen of UC San Diego’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Bioinspired Robotics and Design Lab, and Bill Bowen of Amorphic Robot Works.

“Dual Pneuma” is produced by the UC Irvine Beall Center for Art + Technology and will be exhibited in “Future Tense: Art, Complexity and Predictability” at the Beall Center as part of Getty’s PST ART: “Art & Science Collide” from September – December 2024.

Chico MacMurtrie’s work pushes the boundaries between robotic sculpture, new media installation and performance. After receiving an M.F.A from UCLA, he became known for his anthropomorphic, computer-controlled sculptures, which evolved over the years into a “Society of Machines.” Today, operating out of a studio in Brooklyn, New York, also known as the “Robotic Church,” MacMurtrie is internationally recognized for his “Inflatable Architectural Bodies” series, which explores the underlying essence of movement and transformation in organic and non-organic bodies. Freestanding or suspended in mid-air, these servo-pneumatic “soft machines” inflate and deflate through an articulated series of movements, depicting imaginary molecular and cellular formations on a magnified scale.

MacMurtrie has received numerous awards for his experimental new media artworks, including five grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation Grant, the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, VIDA Life 11.0, and Prix Ars Electronica, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Mapfund Grant, the New York Fellowship for the Arts and the MAAF Grant. MacMurtrie/ARW’s works have been presented in major museums and venues around the world, including the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC), Beijing; Hayward Gallery, London; Museo de la Reina Sofia, Madrid; Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, Paris; Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), Mexico City; Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY; Shanghai Biennale; Tri Postal, Lille, (retrospective exhibition), Muffatwerk, Munich;
Ex-Dogana, Rome, ZHI Art Museum, Chengdu; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, AZ; Rubin Center for the Visual Arts (UTEP), El Paso, TX; Queens Museum, Queens, NY and the Bronx Museum for the Visual Arts, Bronx, NY.