Harris Rosenblum

Sara’s is pleased to present Inorganic Demons, an exhibition of new sculpture by Harris Rosenblum. This exhibition takes the chapter “War as a Machine” in Reza Negarestani’s Cyclonopedia (published 2008) as its narrative framework and philosophical entry point. The fourteen objects shown make material Negarestani’s apocalyptic universe through computer-aided manufacturing processes and dutifully sourced reference material, such as WWII trench-based artisan weaponry and raw clay harvested from a Wendy’s parking lot during construction. Extending Rosenblum’s research into online craft tutorials, fringe ideologies, and machine comprehension, Inorganic Demons pinpoints an area of commonality in Cyclonopedia’s alternate historical Iraq war theology-fiction, and in doing so, elevates the natural and cultural detritus of the contemporary world into a position of reverence.

"A demon is just a thing which destroys the possibility of a logically consistent world. Forever there has been a belief in a system that makes reality work. Demons are the internal axioms within the calculus that fall into contradiction. It’s the presence of the Demiurge baked into God. The warp. Integer overflow becomes nuclear Gandhi, ancient algal petro-biotic masses become fuel for the industrial monoculture farming of new forever chemicals, the milling machine divides by zero to reform the planet into a lathe. All towards the collapse of linear time, towards the collapse of a world that can be understood. To a full alienation of reality from its structure where only the accidental magic remains.

Political structures no longer seem to make sense. Humanity accelerates towards rapid environmental collapse. The War Machine appears to have no driver. Reality feels fractured and log readout is just an infinite loop.

In these times of magic, the hegemony of the decaying structure looses its teeth. In a vacuum of meaning, new narratives begin to form that make sense of the shifting calculus. The alienation birthed by hegemony, bores its host like a parasite. In this extreme alienation, almost everything I do or encounter seems to be a vector for gnosis. The Demiurge has flooded it all. The warp is just the physical world now. The detritus of consumption seems to be the new identity. Crude oil forms the image of a deity as an apparition of the graphics card or through a torrent of shifting land in the war on terror. Eating heaven and vomiting it as a beautiful material world. These works are about how beautiful the fractured reality is. When I lay down in its caustics it feels like I can’t help but ascend."

—Harris Rosenblum

Harris Rosenblum is a sculptor based in Belmont, MA. He received his MFA from Kent State University. He currently works at the Graduate School of Design as a Digital Fabrication Technical Specialist and is a member of internet art collective Do Not Research. Recent exhibitions include Relics of the Corrupted Blood, Blade Study, New York.