Blowing Robots

The Journal Gallery is pleased to present Blowing Robots, an exhibition of new sculptures by Marianne Vitale. The artist’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles in nearly a decade, Blowing Robots reconstructs the remains of decommissioned locomotives into sculpture. The project examines the material legacy of industrial production and its collapse. Engines, turbines, and outer steel plating are reconfigured into forms estranged from their original function. Obsolescence, failure, and transformation are foregrounded: once central to productivity and mobility, these machine remnants now sit in stasis, exposed as artifacts of ambition, exhaustion, and decay. Cubes are made from locomotive body skins—steel sheathing that once wrapped and shielded diesel engines over millions of rail miles. Cut into sections and reassembled, they form hollow blocks, stacked into modular piles, totems and walls, architectural in presence. Skull is a locomotive cylinder head. Detached from its block, its ports and voids suggest a skeletal image—a mechanical part turned exposed cranium. Junk is a pneumatic regulator, once used to safeguard pistons by controlling airflow, now overtly phallic in profile. Both are industrial readymades—unchanged in form, estranged from use. Together, these works situate locomotive remains within two histories: the archive of American rail engineering and the sculptural traditions of raw material, Minimalism, and the readymade. Marianne Vitale was born in East Rockaway, New York in 1973. She received a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York, New York. Vitale’s recent solo and group exhibitions include "Vitale Andre Vega" at The Journal Gallery in Paris, France (2025); "The World is Garbage" at New Discretions in New York, New York (2025); "Take This Feeling of Doom and Do a Little Dance With It" at Picture Room in New York, New York (2024); "Human Nature" at The Journal Gallery in Los Angeles, California (2024); "Menemsha" at Galeria Doris Ghetta in Ortesia, Italy (2024); Tennis Elbow at The Journal Gallery in New York, New York (2022); "Terrena Spirituale" at Galeria Doris Ghetta in Ortesia, Italy (2022); "Bottles and Bridges: Advances in Collective Obliteration" at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia curated by Cecilia Alemani in Venice, Italy (2022); "The World, The Flesh and the Devil" at Couvent des Cordeliers in Savenay, France (2020); Tennis Elbow at The Journal Gallery in New York, New York (2020); "Double Vision" at the Elaine de Kooning House in East Hampton, New York (2019); "Untitled" at Karma in New York, New York (2015); "Oh Don't Ask Why" at the Contemporary Fine Arts in Berlin, Germany (2015); "No Man's Land" at The Contemporary Arts Foundation in Miami, Florida (2015); "Six Door" at the Foundation for Contemporary Art in New York, New York (2015); "Teeth Gnash Tennessee" at Invisible Exports in New York, New York (2015); "Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue" at Fondazione Sandretto Rebaudengo in Turin, Italy (2015); "AnnCraven - Marianne Vitale, Paris" at Ceysson Gallery in Paris, France (2014); "Combustion" at SAKS Gallery in Geneva, Switzerland (2014); "The Last Brucennial" in New York, New York (2014); "Too Much Satan For One Hand" at Ibid Projects in London, United Kingdom (2011); "How Soon Now" at the Rubell Family Collection in Miami, Florida (2010); and the "Whitney Biennial 2010" at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, New York (2010). Marianne Vitale lives and works in New York, New York.