Francisco "Chico" MacMurtrie (born 1961) is an American artist based in Brooklyn, New York. His work explores the intersection of robotic sculpture, installation, and performance.
Early life and education MacMurtrie was born in Deming, New Mexico in 1961, and grew up in Bisbee, Arizona.
He attended the University of Arizona from 1980 to 1983, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. From 1983 to 1987, he studied at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), graduating with a Master of Fine Arts degree in New Forms and Concepts.
Career
Between 1987 and 1989, MacMurtrie worked as an artist in residence at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, California.
In 1991, MacMurtrie formed Amorphic Robot Works (ARW), a group of artists and engineers working together to create robotic art performances and installations. Throughout the 1990s, MacMurtrie and ARW created a body of work composed of hundreds of kinetic, at times percussive or musical metal sculptures which have been exhibited in different configurations mostly throughout Europe, Asia, and Latin America. In 2004, MacMurtrie operated a material shift from working with metal to creating his sculptures out of high tensile fabric. The inflatable sculptures or Inflatable Architectural Bodies are concerned with organic form and the expression of transient qualities of human or animal movement embodied through abstract robotic form.
MacMurtrie and ARW's first public art installation was Urge to Stand (1999), a bronze and steel sculpture permanently installed at Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco. The sculpture is composed of an androgynous metal figure on top of a 12-foot globe, which mirrors the movements of visitors sitting on or standing up from a bench facing the sculpture. Other public commissions include Fetus to Man (2003), a sculpture/clock for the city of Lille, France, and Growing, Raining Tree (2003), commissioned by the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Recognition MacMurtrie became a Guggenheim Fellow in 2016. He has been awarded five grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Other grants and awards he has received include the San Francisco Bay Guardian Goldie Award; Prix Ars Electronica; the VIDA Life 11.0 Third Prize in Hybrid Art; the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship; the Map Fund Grant, and the Media Arts Foundation Grant.
References
External links Amorphic Robot Works Chico Macmurtrie interview