Andréa Stanislav

The Wishing Machine

2017  

Gold mirror acetate, steel, horse skull, mirror acrylic, wood, crystal glass, stainless steel  

8' x 10' x 4'  

 The horse skull slowly spins around on its square mirror platform. As the skull rotates, the gold square mirror elements catch in the skull's jaw and teeth, slowly setting the three suspended gold forms into a rotation — in a kinetic manner of a Rube Goldberg machine. The title is a reference to the mystical wish-granting "Golden Sphere" found in the "Zone" from the 1971 science fiction novel, The Roadside Picnic, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (whose names also appear in The Visitors (a glitter text construction in this gallery). The Roadside Picnic is also the novel that the 1979 science fiction film, Stalker, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, is based on.