Where’s My Jetpack!?, Machine and Robotic Art Show by Kal Spelletich

Where’s My Jetpack!? is a new art exhibit by San Francisco artist Kal Spelletich featuring machines, robots, jetpacks, video and photographs that takes place July 9 through August 12th at Jack Hanley Gallery in New York City. There’s an opening party on July 9 with beer and BBQ from 6-8pm, followed by a closing party on August 12th.

Before flying was a means to an end, it was a sensation. The perennial struggle to fly sought a deep-rooted joy of weightlessness, the release of our own corporeality, and the all-too-human satisfaction of “touching the sky”. The flying machine made the human superhuman. For Kal Spelletich, flight’s future promise may be gone but not forgotten – where are the jetpacks? The flying cars, escape pods, gravity boots, moon colonies? This is supposed to be the future. Where’s My Jetpack?! takes us back to a moment of invention. Or perhaps, reminds us that its time is now.

As always with flight, there is an element of danger. The aspiration to conquer the sky comes with a gut-wrenching fear of free fall, an Icaran fate. Machinery may have liberated the body from gravity, but not the mind; Spelletich asks us to to consider how the body might transcend the mind in order to free it as well. Where’s My Jetpack? celebrates the fact that we are still participants in an ancient and ongoing struggle to conquer gravity.

Kal Spelletich received his MFA from the University of Texas at Austin and currently lives and works in a Socialist arts collective in San Francisco, California. Spelletich helped foundSEEMEN, a collective of individuals who enjoy building extreme machines and robotsthat they allow their audience to operate. He is a notorious guerilla gardener and activist.He has also worked with the legendary machine performance art group, Survival Research Laboratories.

Neither Kal Spelletich, Jack Hanley Gallery nor anyone shall be held responsible or liable for any LOSS, DAMAGE, INJURY or DEATH arising from any activity organized, sponsored or promoted by Kal or Jack the presenting organization anywhere in the universe, forever.
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photo by Kal Spelletich