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A First-of-Its-Kind Automotive Installation During Art Basel Miami
MIAMI - Californer -- The Patina Collective and multidisciplinary artist Jesse Draxler announce the premiere of C280: The Machine of Loving Grace, an immersive installation that merges fine art, sound, and automotive culture. The project centers on Draxler's 1997 Mercedes C280, transforming the vehicle into both subject and instrument and reframing a 3,000-mile cross-country drive as an exchange between human psychology and mechanical presence.
Created in collaboration with The Patina Collective, the installation constructs a hybrid environment—part sanctuary, part industrial apparatus—using LED walls, moving-image projection, photographic works, rare vehicles, and collected ephemera. Within this expanded framework, the work examines the phenomenology of travel: the drift of highway time, the dissolution of internal monologue into rhythm, and the evolving dialogue between body and machine.
"The Patina Collective has been collaborating with artists since our inception, and we know this installation with Jesse Draxler will have both the art community and car community talking for years to come," said Daniel Hassan, Founder of The Patina Collective.
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The installation draws on Draxler's upbringing in rural Wisconsin, where fabrication, improvisation, and tool-based problem-solving shaped his early creative vocabulary. In this context, the utilitarian C280 becomes a symbolic presence. Displayed among one-of-one vehicles from The Patina Collective's archive, it creates a deliberate tension between everyday materiality and automotive rarity.
The title, The Machine of Loving Grace, references 1990s industrial music, Richard Brautigan's techno-utopian poetics, and moments of synchronicity experienced during the drive. For Draxler, the phrase reflects the emotional complexity of technological intimacy—balancing precision and empathy, utility and reflection.
The project builds on themes central to Draxler's practice, seen in works such as CRASH and C2ASH, which explore fragmentation, personal mythology, and narrative collapse. Rather than engaging in automotive fetishism, C280 situates mechanical forms within lived experience, positioning the car as a site where identity, memory, and motion intersect.
Draxler's connection to Mercedes-Benz stems from shared philosophies of exacting control. The calibrated responsiveness of the C280 mirrors the incision-based language of his collage practice, where the X-Acto blade becomes a tool of precision and intervention. This alignment shaped the drive, which served both as physical relocation between studios and as conceptual structure for the installation.
More on The Californer
The video component is built from continuous handheld footage captured throughout the journey. Treating the camera as an extension of perception, Draxler recorded real-time, unrepeatable experiences of landscape and motion. The resulting imagery foregrounds subjectivity, drawn directly from the conditions of travel and the evolving relationship between artist and machine.
Through this process, the project ultimately functions as a form of self-portraiture—mediated by movement, distance, and return. Editing became a way of examining earlier versions of the self, with the car operating as an instrument of reflection and continuity. The exhibit will be located at 401 NW 79th St. Miami, FL 33150. Street parking is available.
MEDIA PREVIEW
Wednesday, December 3, 2025
6:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Accredited media only. Artist interviews available onsite or in advance.
PUBLIC EXHIBITION HOURS
Thursday, December 4: 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Friday, December 5: 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM
Saturday, December 6: 10:00 AM – 9:00 PM
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE PATINA COLLECTIVE
patinacollective.com | @thepatinacollective
LEARN MORE ABOUT JESSE DRAXLER
jessedraxler.com | @jessedraxler
Created in collaboration with The Patina Collective, the installation constructs a hybrid environment—part sanctuary, part industrial apparatus—using LED walls, moving-image projection, photographic works, rare vehicles, and collected ephemera. Within this expanded framework, the work examines the phenomenology of travel: the drift of highway time, the dissolution of internal monologue into rhythm, and the evolving dialogue between body and machine.
"The Patina Collective has been collaborating with artists since our inception, and we know this installation with Jesse Draxler will have both the art community and car community talking for years to come," said Daniel Hassan, Founder of The Patina Collective.
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The installation draws on Draxler's upbringing in rural Wisconsin, where fabrication, improvisation, and tool-based problem-solving shaped his early creative vocabulary. In this context, the utilitarian C280 becomes a symbolic presence. Displayed among one-of-one vehicles from The Patina Collective's archive, it creates a deliberate tension between everyday materiality and automotive rarity.
The title, The Machine of Loving Grace, references 1990s industrial music, Richard Brautigan's techno-utopian poetics, and moments of synchronicity experienced during the drive. For Draxler, the phrase reflects the emotional complexity of technological intimacy—balancing precision and empathy, utility and reflection.
The project builds on themes central to Draxler's practice, seen in works such as CRASH and C2ASH, which explore fragmentation, personal mythology, and narrative collapse. Rather than engaging in automotive fetishism, C280 situates mechanical forms within lived experience, positioning the car as a site where identity, memory, and motion intersect.
Draxler's connection to Mercedes-Benz stems from shared philosophies of exacting control. The calibrated responsiveness of the C280 mirrors the incision-based language of his collage practice, where the X-Acto blade becomes a tool of precision and intervention. This alignment shaped the drive, which served both as physical relocation between studios and as conceptual structure for the installation.
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The video component is built from continuous handheld footage captured throughout the journey. Treating the camera as an extension of perception, Draxler recorded real-time, unrepeatable experiences of landscape and motion. The resulting imagery foregrounds subjectivity, drawn directly from the conditions of travel and the evolving relationship between artist and machine.
Through this process, the project ultimately functions as a form of self-portraiture—mediated by movement, distance, and return. Editing became a way of examining earlier versions of the self, with the car operating as an instrument of reflection and continuity. The exhibit will be located at 401 NW 79th St. Miami, FL 33150. Street parking is available.
MEDIA PREVIEW
Wednesday, December 3, 2025
6:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Accredited media only. Artist interviews available onsite or in advance.
PUBLIC EXHIBITION HOURS
Thursday, December 4: 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Friday, December 5: 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM
Saturday, December 6: 10:00 AM – 9:00 PM
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE PATINA COLLECTIVE
patinacollective.com | @thepatinacollective
LEARN MORE ABOUT JESSE DRAXLER
jessedraxler.com | @jessedraxler
Source: The Patina Collective
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