Deus Machina

In his solo exhibition, Deus Machina, Mike Adrao proposes that the machine itself—the systems at work in our everyday lives, whether in finance, religion, or technology—is, in itself, the god: omnipresent, self-contained, and seemingly indestructible. Through his works, Adrao considers how these seemingly distinct forces have joined and commingled into one vast god-machine, whose gravity is virtually inescapable.

In a series of monochromatic works in charcoal, Adrao fashions religious iconography from the patterns and motifs found in defunct currency bills. Swirls and repetitions become the baroque patterns of a cross; the familiar arm span of Christ the Redeemer; the ornate frame of a reliquary. What might ordinarily function as security features—intricate lines designed to authenticate value—are transformed into the visual language of the sacred.

The conflation, however, is not simply about how religion intersects with financial interest, but how we, collectively, have decided that money should become an operative force: a system whose value hinges on something invisible, and upon which we have learned to rely through what are, essentially, numbers and marks on a piece of paper. We believe in money in much the same way that we believe in the sacred: through a shared act of faith.

Through this, one may ask: Who does one serve? This was the question posited by the late, legendary curator Bobi Valenzuela to Adrao and to other artists. When one makes art sacred in both the symbolic and financial sense, who, ultimately, is being served? Whose lives are being touched by deliberate marks on canvas—or paper—on a wall?

The question is also embedded in the complexity of Adrao’s visual language. In the ornate, swirling patterns of his works, mythic and market forces are brought before us as if upon the same altar. Their intricate surfaces seduce even as they entangle. And so we are left to ask: who do we serve before these altars?

Deus Machina, as in Adrao’s previous works, recognizes how the seeming complexity of the world we have built emerges from our own motivations and desires, which are then fed by this very same world in a continuous loop. We construct the systems that govern us, submit ourselves to them, and in turn allow them to shape the desires that compel us to sustain them. Until, almost imperceptibly, the tentacles of power reach our throats without us even knowing it.