Los Angeles-based artist Joseph Kohnke's new show, "Displacements," opens at Angels Gallery this Saturday, September 7. The reception, which is fun, free, and open to the public, is on Saturday from 6 to 8 pm.

The Los Angeles Times called Kohnke's last work shown at Angeles Gallery (as part of a group show, back in 2010), "materially humble, conceptually brilliant," describing the artwork that Kohnke is posing with above in this way:

Motors activate more than 40 small oil derricks crafted out of white plastic cutlery: Knife blades comprise the bobbing heads of these tiny industrial beasts; fork tines anchor them to the benches and eating surface of the worn wooden picnic table they diligently mine. The plasticware, a petroleum-based product, drills as if for its own survival, steadily, relentlessly attempting to close the loop. Throwaway utensils enable the picnic while sullying its setting -- convenience's flip side is, to put it mildly, a grotesque environmental, economic and political hassle. Kohnke's work has all the charm of a mechanical toy, one that whispers a death threat. Titling it "Smart & Final," after the store where he bought the utensils, Kohnke throws two more loaded adjectives onto the heap of ideas and issues his incisive piece generates. 

Here's a glimpse of one the new pieces in the show (it remains to be seen how it will move):

Here's what the gallery has to say about Kohnke and his work:

Joseph Kohnke, renowned for his remarkable capacity to animate mechanical objects and everyday materials, continues to expand his investigation of the complex, intimate relationship between machines and people....Relying on our innate perception of the uncanny, Kohnke's work strives (and succeeds) to invoke an undeniable sense of something that is not there. To say the works simply animate the inanimate is so sell them short; the work is not merely kinetic. The artist elevates behaviors, implications, and suggestions to poetic affect. It is his capacity to produce disturbing effects with familiar objects - the sense of our mortal vulnerability - that touches the viewer so deeply.

Angles Gallery is located at 2754 S. La Cienega Blvd.