502 Bad Gateway

Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA

Artist statement

502 Bad Gateway (@502.bg) is the artist duo of Alexander Baumann and Robert Ruth, whose collaborative artistic disciplines include motion capture performance, oil painting, 3D game development, sculpture, vintage tech restoration, building audio synthesizers, animation, and filmmaking. Their practice focuses on integrating their artistic methods with deprecated technologies from many different eras, drawing on the history of usage to underline the intent of the work. Their work has been displayed in solo exhibitions at T293 gallery in Rome, Sof:Art gallery in Bologna, Flux Factory in New York, and as part of a group show at AROS art museum in Aarhus, Denmark. They have performed on stages at the New Museum’s DEMO Showcase in Manhattan, ZeroSpace in Brooklyn, Standard Vision Studios in Los Angeles, and many underground New York venues. Their performance practice includes solo audiovisual narrative productions as well as collaborations with Club Cringe, Von, Uffie, Kevin Peter He, Kink Out, and Team Rolfes. With a foot in the world of experimental film and live performance, and the other in fine art and installation, 502 Bad Gateway desires to break the traditionally static, immutable nature of gallery work, by incorporating the real-time responsiveness of interactive live performance.

Artwork

• Weathers To A Bad Position, 2026. Projected Film
• The Course of the Basin Advance, 2026. oil on canvas, polyurethane acrylate, polylactic acid, ulexite, led matrix, esp32, lcd screen, trs cables, foot pedal switch, speaker
• Warned For Each Other, Farewell, 2026. oil on canvas, polyurethane acrylate, polylactic acid, acrylic, ferrofluid, electromagnet, laser projector, trs cables, 532nm laser, raspberry pi, esp32, ultrasonic sensor, piezo speaker
• Leave Any Hope, What You Get, 2026. oil on canvas, polyurethane acrylate, polylactic acid, copper, acrylic, trs cables, variable power supply, 405nm laser, modular synthesizer, speaker, aluminum coated glass mirror, rubber latex
• In The End, And In Minutes, 2026. lua game for windows, aluminum, polylactic acid, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, 1/2in emt conduit, crt television, acrylic, esp32, lcd screens, 32amp knife switch, vu meters, cortelco wall phone
• The Funes Mechanical Bull (Before Impact), 2024. black pla, stained wood, brass
• The Zone (486), 2024. Alienware laptop running Windows 10, T.16000m joystick, print manual, cd case, website printout, califone headphones, desk
• Passerine in Mouth of Naja, 2024. cast sterling silver earrings, blue-tinted resin, portable dvd player, califone headphones
• The Zone (6502) , 2024. Panasonic Toughbook running Windows XP, VirtualBoy gameboy emulator, nes advantage joystick, custom gameboy rom, desk, print manual, micro oled display, arduino pro micro, califone headphones, desk
• Brawny Ziggurat, 2024. red-tinted resin, portable dvd player, califone headphones
• 9 Billion Acts , 2024. IBM Thinkpad running Windows 98, Asus eeePC running Linux, web scraper, foam-lined hard case, rj45 cable, LED panel, arduino uno
• House of Bread, 2023. sand cast zinc alloy, wood, water-based stain, oil-based stain
• Scorched Ecumene , 2022. Oil on canvas, folding laptop with .exe game, trackball mouse
• 45 Regular, 2022. Oil on canvas, touch display
• The Severance of Ireneo , 2022. Oil on canvas, cassette player with audio play (29:59)
• Maturinbrú, 2022. Oil on canvas, synthesizer, speaker, aluminum patch contacts
• The Garden of Cronus, 2022. Oil on canvas, folding laptop with .exe game, keypad
• Bone and Arrow, 2022. 3D printed oxidized copper and PLA, concrete, tablet with .mp4 video (8:24)
• Long Story Short, 2022. Concrete cast in PLA 3D print, poured bismuth, folding laptop with .mp4 video (7:08)
• The Holophote Library , 2022. Concrete cast in PLA 3D print, plastic structure, folding laptop with .mp4 video (5:43)
• Mystical Galerie, 2022. Wooden desk, chair, pc running Windows 3.1, point and click adventure game created with visual basic, mouse and mousepad, trackball keyboard, miscellaneous desk clutter
• The Q Publics, 2022. 8mm projector, 6fps film loop, 8mm editing deck, 3D printed projection surface
• Omitted Catalogues in Matrice, 2022. 2 custom microfiche film slides, 2 microfiche readers, desk, chair, cryptex, miscellaneous desk clutter
• The Long Story, 2021. PLA Cast Concrete, trackball mouse, foldable laptop, playabe .exe, projector