Nathan Meltz

Part critique, part fascination, the art I create examines the infiltration of technology into every facet of our lives, from family and food to politics and war. Nightmarish industrial creations are set against images of grand mechanical constructions, an off-kilter vision of technology. In my visual vocabulary, the contemporary world of nanotechnology and genetic modification is retrofitted with collaged analog machine parts. Collages of mechanical humanoids and animals turn into printmaking, animation, and sculpture, as I create visual narratives telling the story of a doomed robotic populace in a techno-dystopia.

In one narrative, a mechanical chicken strives to escape the torturous automated factory farm. In another, robot sex leads to reproductive disasters. In yet another, atomic technologies lead to nuclear holocaust. These tales of love, violence, and circuit boards alert the viewer to both the subtle, and not so subtle ways technology is sneaking into our lives, and prepares them to resist this inevitable robot invasion.

My current body of work, situated in printmaking, explores the role of technology in the natural ecosystem, imagining a scenario in which animals, plants, and fungi attempt a psychedelic exodus from our dying world in outer space.