Kasey McMahon Rebuilds Rodin's Thinker in Steel and Network Cable
Artist Kasey McMahon's life-size Thinker pairs a welded steel armature with hundreds of feet of hand-wrapped CAT5 and CAT6 cable. The privately commissioned work is installed in Austin, Texas.
- Section
- Architecture
- Author
- By Marcus Bennett
- Filed
- Length
- 2 min read
Key takeaways
- Kasey McMahon built a life-size Thinker from a welded steel armature wrapped by hand in hundreds of feet of CAT5 and CAT6 network cable.
- The sculpture is the fourth life-size figure in McMahon's cable work and her first male figure; she has used network cable as a sculptural material for over a decade.
- The privately commissioned piece was fabricated in a converted 120-year-old Portland-area garage and is now installed in Austin, Texas.
Artist Kasey McMahon has built a life-size Thinker out of a welded steel armature and hundreds of feet of CAT5 and CAT6 network cable, replacing the bronze solidity of Rodin's famous figure with the physical infrastructure of the digital world.
The sculpture is now installed in Austin, Texas, after a private commission. It is the fourth life-size human figure in McMahon's ongoing body of cable-based work and her first male figure. She began working with network cable as a sculptural material more than a decade ago, drawn to the idea of turning the infrastructure behind digital life into something physical.
The construction process was hybrid and largely manual. McMahon first welded a steel armature that established the anatomy and seated posture. She then wrapped and layered hundreds of feet of network cable by hand until the figure took shape, alternating between metal fabrication, anatomical adjustment, and the slower work of building mass and gesture through cable.
The material is not concealed. Connectors, printed markings, and individual lengths of cable remain visible across the surface. Blue, gray and white dominate the figure, punctuated by strands of red.
McMahon fabricated the work in her Portland-area studio, a converted 120-year-old garage. Studio photography is by Aaron Wessling of Single File Studio; process and installation photography by McMahon herself.
The pose is familiar, but the material changes the question the work asks. The figure is unmistakably human, yet its body is made from the infrastructure through which human communication and information travel. McMahon does not frame the piece as an answer to the current anxieties around artificial intelligence and technology. The figure simply sits, and thinks.
For McMahon, the project continues a decade-long investigation into what happens when the hidden wiring of contemporary life becomes the visible substance of a body — one that, like Rodin's original, remains deep in thought.
Original: atypicalart.com
