Tomaž Furlan's playful machines critique labor at Rochechouart

The first monographic exhibition of Slovenian artist Tomaž Furlan (b. 1978) fills the vast attic of the Château de Rochechouart with interactive machine-sculptures that blend sculpture, performance, and video. Using salvaged materials—metal, wood, stone, foam—Furlan, a self-taught stonecutter, evokes Duchamp, Tinguely, Fischli/Weiss, Sarah Szee, and Wim Delvoye. His decade-long series 'Wear Series (2005–2015)' presents machines that serve as performance tools and video props, inviting viewers to touch and test them. Visitors row a bench to trigger coin sounds, insert ping-pong balls into tubes, walk on car doors, engrave metal with a nail, or teeter on a metal structure. Accompanying films act as instruction manuals, encouraging imitation of the artist's gestures. The repetitive actions underscore a link to labor, turning the body into a work tool—echoing Sisyphus, Chaplin's Modern Times, and the mad scientist. Melancholy pervades: playful devices become gentle tortures (a slap, a hand trap), cushioned by foam to simulate pain without harm. Concrete prostheses hinder movement; everyday actions (water, TV, toilet) require coins. As visitors progress, darkness and noise intensify, shifting from tragic to comic, critiquing a society where overproduction and dehumanization trump freedom and pleasure.