Nick Veasey & Tyler Shields: The Art of the Automobile

The automobile has always been more than transportation. It is aspiration made metal, desire made tangible, power given form. Two of the most compelling artists working today have each turned their attention to that idea — and arrived at completely different conclusions.

Nick Veasey approaches the machine from the inside out. Working with industrial X-ray equipment from his radiation-proof studio in Kent, England, he strips away the bodywork entirely, exposing the mechanical skeleton beneath. His 1988 Ferrari F40 GTE, 1972 Porsche 911 Targa, 1948 Mercury Cowboy, and 1930s Pontiac with Gangsters reveal an inner architecture of extraordinary precision and unexpected beauty. These are not photographs of cars. They are portraits of what a car actually is when everything designed to impress you has been removed.

Tyler Shields approaches the same subject from the opposite direction. His Ferraris are all surface — gleaming, cinematic, and loaded with tension. Ferrari Legs, Ferrari Mechanic, Ferrari On Fire II, and Bunny Ferrari II take the car as a prop in a larger drama, placing it inside scenarios that are glamorous, unsettling, and impossible to look away from. The machine becomes a symbol, and the symbol burns.

Together these works make a compelling case that the most iconic objects in the world reward the most uncompromising artistic attention — whether that means seeing through them completely or setting them on fire.