M.A.D. Gallery is marking its 15 years of creative ingenuity with Frank Buchwald’s ML15 Helios, a machine conceived as a “mechanical sun”, challenging its “horological instrument nature” by feeling oddly alive.
Helios balances precision and presence: a three-legged stainless-steel structure punctuated by brass, with a central globe lamp and a dimmable LED “corona” that reads instantly as solar, but also faintly fantastic, as if from Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. Two translucent blue rings sharpen that ambiguity, turning the sphere into something between an eye and a gauge, while the adjustable head lets the object subtly “track” a room rather than merely light it.
Buchwald’s best work has always sat in that sweet spot where machinery becomes emotional. He seems to provide his creations with a pineal gland, where their retro-futuristic souls reside. One only has to look at his long-running Machine Lights series to notice the narrative: riveted brass, burnished steel, exposed cabling and the sense that every component has a job and its own personality. Helios departs from the more baroque Machine Lights of the past towards a more self-contained expression, more living-machine.
That spirit is exactly why Helios belongs at M.A.D.Gallery. The gallery was born from a wonderfully stubborn problem: MB&F’s Horological Machines were too kinetic and sculptural for traditional watch retail, yet too “watch” for conventional art galleries, so Max Büsser created a space where mechanical imagination could be seen on its own terms.
Over time, it has become a clubhouse for like-minded creators and collectors, with objects that reward curiosity, craft obsession and a rebellious sense of wonder.
Fifteen years on, M.A.D.Gallery still champions the same delicious idea: that engineering can be playful, and that a well-made machine can feel strangely human.
Author: Julia Pasarón
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