The boom and rumble of giant machines in the noisy gloom of night shift in a foundry merged and emerged from the distant past in Joseph Zirker’s monotypes as imagined mechanical devices.

These images, mostly black and white, are accompanied by playful Calder-esque sculptures constructed of paper that “represent in three dimensions a dual need to both translate and objectify the feelings and ideas that have preoccupied my printmaking in two dimensions” according to Zirker.

He explains, “Artists who make monotypes are painters who find themselves working backwards and enjoying drawing and painting on plate surfaces that, when printed, reveal the image in reverse.”

The exhibition, which opens in the Peninsula Museum of Art’s gallery on January 17, 2010, continues through March 28. Robert Flynn Johnson, Curator Emeritas of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, is the guest curator for “Machines of Memory”.