Celebrate the Singularity: Robotmas is Invading the American Visionary Art Museum

(photograph by Curtis Gregory Perry)

An ever-growing cavalcade of robotic creatures that ramble over a Palm Springs estate will be temporarily invading a gallery of the American Visionary Art Museum this fall. Called Robo Lights, the sculptures are the creation of Kenny Irwin Jr., and the festive and freaky installation at the Baltimore museum will be an outsider art celebration called Robotmas. 

Robotmas will launch on October 5 as part of the museum’s new exhibition called Human, Soul & Machine: The Coming Singularity! (exclamation point included), focusing on technology, which will also include wooden carvings by Fred Carter that were made as a caution on industry’s attack on nature, and a seven-foot-tall Godzilla by O.L. Samuels. 

Yet you can view Robo Lights year-round, although it’s at its most fantastic during the holiday season when the robots are swarmed with millions of lights and illuminations, as well as ”post-apocalyptic extraterrestrial nuclear elves,” as Irwin described in a recent New York Times feature. Joining the mayhem is a “Battle Wagon” driven by Santa with a team of 12 robotic reindeer, a robot standing 50-feet-tall, and wise men laden with microwaves. From the imposing pink robot to the skull-faced battlebot, they’re all built from found materials, particularly broken electronics. Irwin started the sculpture installation back in 1986 at the age of 12, and has continued to morph his father’s California yard into a sci-fi landscape.

Here are some more photographs from Robo Lights, and be sure to mark your calendar for the futuristic art fest that will be Robotmas:

(photograph by Mike Souza)

(photograph by Curtis Gregory Perry)

(photograph by Mike Souza)

(photograph by Mike Souza)

(photograph by Mike Souza)

(photograph by rocor/Flickr user)

(photograph by rocor/Flickr user)

(photograph by rocor/Flickr user)

Kenny Irwin’s Robotmas will be at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore from October 5 to August 31, 2014.