Chico MacMurtrie

Chico MacMurtrie was born in New Mexico in 1961. MacMurtrie received his M.F.A. from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and is internationally recognized as a media artist exploring the intersection of robotic sculpture, installation, and performance. In 1991 MacMurtrie formed Amorphic Robot Works, a group of artists and engineers working together to create robotic art performances and installations. Throughout the 1990s, Chico MacMurtrie / Amorphic Robot Works created a body of work composed of hundreds of kinetic, at times percussive or musical metal sculptures which have been exhibited in different configurations mostly throughout Europe, Asia, and Latin America. In 2004, MacMurtrie operated a material shift from working with metal to creating his sculptures out of high tensile fabric. The inflatable sculptures or Inflatable Architectural Bodies are concerned with organic form and the expression of transient qualities of human or animal movement embodied through abstract robotic form.

MacMurtrie is a Guggenheim Fellow and has previously been awarded five grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Other grants and awards he received include the San Francisco Bay Guardian Goldie Award; Prix Ars Electronica; Vida | Life; the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship; the Map Fund Grant, and the Media Arts Foundation Grant.

The artist's most notable public sculpture is Urge to Stand and permanently installed at Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco, California. This sculpture was created in 1999, and is composed of an androgynous metal figure standing or sitting on top of a 12-foot earth sphere linked to a bench, reacting to visitors sitting or standing up. Other public commissions include Fetus to Man a sculpture/clock for the city of Lille in France, and Growing Raining Tree commissioned by the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati Ohio.

ARW's Artistic Director Chico MacMurtrie, describes his vision, "The work is an ongoing endeavor to uncover the primacy of movement and sound. Each machine is inspired or influenced, both, by modern society, and what I physically experience and sense. The whole of this input informs my ideas and work."