Weschler, Lawrence: Strandbeest. The Dream Machines of Theo Jansen

For sixteen years, Dutch artist Theo Jansen has been working to create a sculptural species that moves, and even survives, on its own. Picking up the wind in gossamer wings, his spindly-legged "Strandbeests" acquire uncanny, animate movements, as if it were blood, not the breeze, running through their delicate forms, and living tissue, not plastic tubing and lemonade bottles, that made up their scuttling limbs. Coinciding with a travelling exhibition, this photographic tribute from Lena Herzog captures Jansen‘s menagerie on the beaches of Holland where, through a process of evolution, they now trot against the sun, sand and sea, even pausing to change direction if they sense loose sand or water that might destabilize their movement. Carefully composed in a meditative black and white, Herzog‘s remarkable images exhibit Jansen‘s passionate vision, as much as they show the eerie intersection of animate and inanimate in his creatures. The result is a mesmerizing encounter with a very Surrealist brand of marvelous, with an unfettered imagination, and with whole new ideas of existence.