Mutant Guitars

Here's something you don't see every day. Indonesia born and based artist Rudi Mantofani has created a set of mutant guitars that are entirely hand-crafted, as in not transformed from ready-made guitars. These unique pieces were shown in the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art at the Gallery of Modern Art in Queensland. They are made out of wood, electric guitar components and paint.

At first glance, these slick guitars by Rudi Mantofani suggest absolute certainty. Yet they are wickedly unplayable: it would be impossible to strike even one note. Something tells me that they just don't make electronic guitar tuners for these bad boys! Perfectly inaccessible, they frustrate our desire to play our fingers across the strings and release their spirited chords. Mantofani has crafted the guitars himself from scratch: they are not transformed ready-made objects, but custom-made affronts to common usage and common sense, transformed into ‘visual parables.'



Gallery of Modern Art, Queensland
Photos via Dustin Osborne and Tony Mockeridge