Civilized Aspirations in Art, Monkeys and small time Entrepreneurs

The electro-mechanical installation features a pair of baboons playing a classic gambling trick. The work alludes Von Kempelen’s “Chess Playing Turk“ (an 18th century hoax automaton that gave the illusion of an intelligent machine) and Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Conjurer“ (a 16th century depiction of a village conman) in an attempt to blur the artificial borders between our rational, polite and slightly ambitions selves on the one hand and the more primal, greedy and curious us on the other.