A growing alphabetical list of Kinetic Artists from around the world, with videos and links to their sculptures and machines…
(This page was split off from my list of Automata Makers when the combined list became too large.)
Jim Bond (UK)
Jim Bond is a mechanical sculptor who works mainly in metal and scrap materials. Jim uses motors, pneumatics and armatures that “by sedulously aping our daily routines” mock human notions of constancy.
Jim Bond (with Martin Smith and Nik Ramage) on Vimeo
Duane Flatmo (USA)
Born in 1957, Duane Flatmo is an American artist, based in northern California, best known for his large kinetic sculpture racing machines. Duane has participated in many “kinetic sculpture races”, including the Kinetic Grand Championship where he was a regular competitor since 1982.
Arthur Ganson (USA)
Arthur Ganson began making kinetic sculpture in 1977. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums across the United States and Europe. Arthur has held residencies at a number of institutions including the Exploratorium in San Francisco and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has maintained an ongoing exhibition of his kinetic sculpture at the MIT Museum since 1995.
Bernhard Jordi (Switzerland)
Bernhard Jordi was born in Bern, Switzerland in 1969. He trained as a civil engineer and locksmith and has worked as a sculptor since 1989. Bernhard’s kinetic sculptures are as purposeless as they are inspiring, with a poetic and delicate aesthetic. They invite the viewer to engage; with a few turns of a handle, his constructions come to life.
Bernhard Jordi YouTube Channel
Bernhard Luginbühl (Switzerland)
Bernhard Luginbühl was born in Bern in 1929. He became well known as an abstract sculptor in iron and steel. Bernhard met Jean Tinguely in the late 1950s, and the two collaborated intensively over the following decades. In 1998, Bernhard opened a sculpture park of his own works in his hometown of Mötschwil.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqhAkXWnEPs
Bernhard Luginbühl playlist on YouTube
Tim Prentice (USA)
Tim Prentice, kinetic sculptor, received a Masters Degree in architecture from Yale in 1960. Fifteen years later, he established a studio in Cornwall, Connecticut to design and fabricate kinetic sculpture. Tim’s work grows out of the tradition of Alexander Calder and George Rickey.
https://vimeo.com/38877211
Tim Prentice playlist on YouTube
Survival Research Laboratories (USA)
Survival Research Laboratories was founded by Mark Pauline in 1978. SRL operates as an organization of creative technicians dedicated to re-directing the techniques, tools and tenets of industry, science and the military away from their typical manifestations in practicality, product or warfare. Since 1979, SRL has staged over 45 mechanized presentations in the United States and Europe.
Survival Research Laboratories YouTube Channel
Jean Tinguely (Switzerland)
The grandaddy of kinetic sculpture, best known for his sculptural machines and kinetic art in the Dada tradition, known officially as ‘metamechanics’. Tinguely’s art satirized the mindless overproduction of material goods in advanced industrial society.
Jean Tinguely playlist on YouTube
Norman Tuck (USA)
Norman Tuck was born in 1945 and spent his childhood in Miami Beach. During graduate school he began his signature series of large, simple kinetic pieces constructed of wood and metal rods and strips. Norman’s interactive, kinetic sculpture has been widely displayed in art and science museums throughout Europe and the United States.