SLOTS by Maximus Clarke at Governors Island Art Fair

"Maximus Clarke employs the metaphor of the slot machine to consider randomness in the life of the artist, only the payout isn’t anything like a deluge of coins; rather, it’s Western culture itself." –Kevin Kinsella, BOMB

SLOTS is a projection-mapped video installation by multimedia artist Maximus Clarke that considers questions of fate, chance, art, and entertainment, using the metaphor of a slot machine. Rows of brilliant images — traditional slot machine symbols, augmented with classic depictions of human faces from the history of Western art — are projected onto a staircase in a dark room. Periodically, the pictures blur into motion, to the sound of spinning gears, and then click into a new configuration.

When a four-in-a-row "jackpot" turns up on one of the steps, a bell begins to chime, the rows of icons fade away, and glowing words float across the stairs for a few moments. Textual sources include Andrei Tarkovsky, William Butler Yeats, a slot machine patent application, and the Biblical story of Genesis 28 — in which Jacob dreams of a ladder to heaven, and a divine promise of prosperity and influence.

The projection of slot machine imagery on to a flight of stairs contrasts the repetitive, contained futility of a gambling device with the directed, functional, hierarchical structure of a staircase. Among the questions raised, but not resolved: Is the art world a set of steps that an artist can credibly climb to achieve significance and success, or a game of chance controlled by unseen forces?

First presented as a site-specific piece at Long Island City's Radiator Gallery in 2012, SLOTS has now been recreated as a freestanding work for the seventh edition of the Governors Island Art Fair. The fair features the work of 100 selected artists from around the world, including painting, video, photography, sculpture, installation, and sound art. Run by artists, for artists, New York’s largest independent exhibition unfolds a short ferry ride away from Brooklyn and Manhattan, every Saturday and Sunday in September 2014.

SLOTS is on view on the 3rd floor of building 407B in the Colonels Row section of Governors Island, on September 13-14, 20-21, and 27-28, between the hours of 11am and 6pm.

This version of SLOTS will be produced in a limited edition of 3 copies. Inquiries may be directed to the Governors Island Art Fair at [email protected].

Video of the 2012 installation of SLOTS: http://vimeo.com/86965683