New Mexico-based artist Max Lehman brings archaeology into dialogue with science fiction in Ancestral Androids at Hecho a Mano, a presentation that imagines artifacts of tomorrow shaped by visual languages of the distant past. Studying Pre-Columbian art history, Lehman points to the ancient Mayanswhose elaborate temples bore images on carved rock slabsand to the Aztec sun stone as a remarkable example of Mexica sculpture. His sculptures channel those references forward, picturing a world far beyond todays developments in robotics and machine learning.
Lehman envisions his ceramics as objects that future archaeologists might unearth without context. I resist providing complete explanations because archaeology rarely offers certainty, he writes. We reconstruct civilizations from fragments, projecting ourselves into the spaces left empty by time. The exhibition also brushes against the scale of contemporary data and archives, asking what information could endure over the next thousand years or more, and how AI might shape which stories persist as fact or drift into myth. Artists understandably worry about AI appropriating their ideas, Lehman says. My own work, however, remains deeply rooted in the physical act of makingthere is still no machine that can throw a ceramic vessel with the intuition, hesitation, and accumulated experience of human hands. Clay continues to preserve evidence of the maker in ways that cannot be simulated.
Idols, oracles, and sci-fi sages in clay
Vividly colorful figuresat once cartoonish and occasionally clownishnod toward sacred archetypes while keeping their intentions opaque. Expressions skew slightly unsettling, and additional faces often appear on bellies or foreheads, hinting at collectivity and shared consciousness. Titles underscore the fusion of eras: works such as The Mother of Machines and The Sapphire Sage invoke devotionals recast through speculative technology. As the artist puts it, The sculptures ask us to consider what happens when artificial beings become old enough to have ancestors, old enough to leave ruins, and old enough for their own history to become myth.
- The Aubergine Oracle from the City of Caracol (2026), ceramic with acrylic and metallic paint, 13.5 x 15.5 x 7 inches
- Petro who is Predicting the Unpredictable (2026), ceramic with acrylic and metallic paint, 12 x 11 x 8 inches
- The Malachite Mage (2026), ceramic with acrylic and metallic paint, 14 x 14 x 7 inches
- Mayan Max and His Pre-Colo iPad (2026), glazed ceramic, 10.5 x 9 x 7 inches
- The Duchess of Digital Data (2026), ceramic with acrylic and metallic paint, 25.5 x 16 x 11 inches
- The Hope for Environmental Renewal (2026), ceramic with acrylic and metallic paint, 15 x 8 x 8 inches
- Fiery Phineas and His Tablet of Doom (2026), glazed ceramic, 10.5 x 9 x 7 inches
- Cecil Sunspot (2026), ceramic with acrylic and metallic paint, 13 x 11 x 7.5 inches
Ancestral Androids continues through November 1 in Santa Fe.
