Ferro, alumínio, peças de automóvel
Coll. Fundação de Serralves — Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Porto. Acquisition 1996
Engenho straddles the boundary between a useless object and a functional engine. With its ambiguous appearance, at once reminiscent of futuristic vehicles and amateur contraptions, this vehicle has been mistaken for a real car by traffic police, earning its creator a parking ticket.

Divided between sculpture and installation, the work of Miguel Palma questions notions of progress and technological development. The artist’s universe alludes to motoring, aviation and civil and naval engineering, often translating into polished, industrial looking objects — recognizable machines (airplanes, cars, boats) that perform absurd actions and bear no relationship to notions of efficiency and progress. Palma adopts an apparently functional aesthetics that combines engineering and amateur inventions and divests the former from any seriousness while cloaking hobbies and small inventions in apparent grandeur.