mac-premo-everything-works-nothing-works-2025.jpg
mac-premo-everything-works-nothing-works-2025.jpg

Everything Works Nothing Works

$2,600.00


Mac Premo
Everything Works Nothing Works, 2025
Mixed media assemblage
11 × 11.5 × 2 in

The Artwork

Everything Works Nothing Works assembles exposed wood, vintage magazine imagery, lined paper, and cutouts of pliers and automotive tools into a composition centered on the visual language of repair. An image of a vintage luxury car shows two people examining its engine beneath an open hood—a scene poised between investigation and uncertainty. The title sharpens that tension, holding confidence and doubt together in a single statement.

Tan, cream, and beige create a restrained palette that connects the paper fragments with the natural tones of the wood. A small area of red interrupts this quiet field, introducing a point of emphasis without overwhelming the composition. The tool imagery and lined paper suggest the practical worlds of maintenance, notation, and problem-solving, while their placement transforms them into elements of an abstract construction.

Encased in a solid, meticulously handcrafted frame, the work gives these everyday references a tactile, sculptural presence. It connects with Premo’s sustained use of collected materials in collage and sculpture, where objects become vehicles for associations beyond their immediate function. Here, the assembled fragments invite reflection on the urge to understand how things work—and the moments when understanding remains just out of reach.

Specifications & Details

Artist: Mac Premo
Title: Everything Works Nothing Works
Year: 2025
Medium: Mixed media assemblage
Dimensions: 11 × 11.5 × 2 in
Style: Contemporary assemblage, sculptural collage
Presentation: Handcrafted frame


Mac Premo
Everything Works Nothing Works, 2025
Mixed media assemblage
11 × 11.5 × 2 in

The Artwork

Everything Works Nothing Works assembles exposed wood, vintage magazine imagery, lined paper, and cutouts of pliers and automotive tools into a composition centered on the visual language of repair. An image of a vintage luxury car shows two people examining its engine beneath an open hood—a scene poised between investigation and uncertainty. The title sharpens that tension, holding confidence and doubt together in a single statement.

Tan, cream, and beige create a restrained palette that connects the paper fragments with the natural tones of the wood. A small area of red interrupts this quiet field, introducing a point of emphasis without overwhelming the composition. The tool imagery and lined paper suggest the practical worlds of maintenance, notation, and problem-solving, while their placement transforms them into elements of an abstract construction.

Encased in a solid, meticulously handcrafted frame, the work gives these everyday references a tactile, sculptural presence. It connects with Premo’s sustained use of collected materials in collage and sculpture, where objects become vehicles for associations beyond their immediate function. Here, the assembled fragments invite reflection on the urge to understand how things work—and the moments when understanding remains just out of reach.

Specifications & Details

Artist: Mac Premo
Title: Everything Works Nothing Works
Year: 2025
Medium: Mixed media assemblage
Dimensions: 11 × 11.5 × 2 in
Style: Contemporary assemblage, sculptural collage
Presentation: Handcrafted frame

Biography

Mac Premo is a Brooklyn-based American artist known for mixed-media assemblage, sculptural collage, and installation. Using collected materials and found objects, Premo constructs works that shift ordinary things from utility into metaphor. Wood, imagery, text, hardware, and unexpected fragments become vehicles for humor, memory, visual rhythm, and narrative possibility.

Premo’s works occupy a space between abstraction and storytelling. Their precise, often playful constructions recall imaginary tools, incomplete machines, diagrammatic systems, and architectural models—yet they remain deeply human, shaped by the histories and emotional residue of their materials.

A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Premo has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at MoMA PS1, the Brooklyn Museum, the Ringling Museum, the New Museum, and The Invisible Dog Art Center.

“I am fascinated by the stories behind objects and by the way meaning shifts when something is removed from its original purpose and placed into a new context. My work is about that transformation—how found materials, memory, and structure can come together to create something unexpectedly resonant.”

– Mac Premo