When first offered the role of associate artist at the National Gallery, Michael Landy is reported to have asked the panel to confirm they knew who he was and exactly what he did. It is quite conceivable that the question was posed in earnest.

Nearby and not so long ago, the artist invited contemporaries and peers – amateurs and professionals alike – to heave their unwanted canvasses into a skip at the neighbouring Portrait Gallery. Combining the physical erasure of cultural artefacts with the implied violence of selecting works to form a canon, Art Bin (2010) quickly came to resemble a pyre awaiting flame. Moreover, this is a man so opposed to the hoarding tendency he identifies as underpinning late capitalist   societies that – over the course of the fortnight that formed his performance piece Break Down in 2001 – he systematically catalogued and destroyed his every possession. Amongst other things, this included his car, birth certificate and an early oil painting by Damien Hirst – a gift to Landy from the artist whilst they were studying together at Goldsmith’s College.

If such behaviour suggests antipathy for everything institutionalised art represents, Saints Alive sees little desire to reign in these tendencies; to the contrary, these exploits are worked to their logical conclusion in Trafalgar Square. The centrepiece of the exhibition is seven self-flagellating robots, slowly in the process of destroying themselves. Indeed, so thorough a job were they doing that only three were functional during my visit, days into a six-month run. The machines are huge, their size in proportion to their suffering. The fractured shells of their bodies – already several appendages  short – are filled to overflowing with cogs, wires and motors, hanging motionless until activated by a passing visitor. Then, all is a clamour – here, Saint Apollonia gorges her mouth with a pair of pliers; there, Saint Jerome pounds at his chest with a rock, beating-out a menacing staccato. Surfaces buckle. Slowly, glacially, we see the egg-shell paintwork splinter.

But for all their animation and life, these figures reek of the grave. Their movements, though expansive, are constrained and relentless and lack the finer polish of reason; their stasis is charged with impatience to continue their macabre activity. This ‘unfreedom’ – this relentless and stubborn pursuit of one fixed ideal – is analogous with death. But Landy’s machines do more than relate religious fanaticism with the automacity of the machine. Rather, this is more of a commentary on the violence of the construction of art historical narratives. It may seem counterintuitive, but Saints Alive is a secular show – concerned more with matters aesthetic than ascetic.

The evidence for this is found in Landy’s borrowings. The sculptures are cobbled together from images he found in the gallery’s renaissance collection, and the robotics themselves owe much to the work of Jean Tinguely. As a result, it seems that one aspect of the saints’ suffering is rooted in a profound sense of displacement; we perhaps become aware of their status as disembodied images – of the widening gulf that has arisen between the sign and the signified.

This idea is exemplified by Saint Catherine Wheel Dump (2012). Here, the artist has depicted every wheel he identified in every image of the saint. On one hand, this collage is a postmodern hodgepodge of imagery hewn from the collection – Landy set about his task by taking a scalpel to high-resolution prints of the gallery’s paintings; on the other, the repetitiousness of the image leads us to recognise the reductionism inherent in acts of representation. So ubiquitous is the symbol of her demise that it is deemed capable of evoking her in her absence.

Multi-Saint (2013) illustrates an advanced, even terminal stage in the progression of this process. Here, a number of characters mingle and become indistinct. Saint Lucy is represented only by her eyes, which she is said to have plucked-out for a gentleman who admired them; Saint Lawrence by the white-hot griddle upon which he was toasted; Michael by his boots and scales; Peter by his ghoulish face split with a machete. Individual significance is lost – of the saints as people, who are forgotten, and of the source material, which is usurped.

For this reason, the destructive dimension of Saints Alive is not only physical; rather, the repetition of the spectacle of martyrdom is a process of metaphysical annihilation in which we, the audience, is complicit and guilty. The footswitches that activate the machines aren’t about to step on themselves. Doubting Thomas (2013) will only thrust his finger into Christ’s flank at our behest. Perhaps these sculptures speak of a human need for coherence – to probe and palpate problematic ruptures in our understanding; perhaps this explains the need for institutions such as the National Gallery to so closely guard its canon and thereby safeguard its audience. This is why Landy’s selection for this role is so unexpected and exhilarating. His critique of the National’s core values succeeds merely by underscoring them.

But on one score, he has them bang-to-rites. Kinetic and interactive art has always seemed a victim of its own success; disregarded by critics as entertainment, its popularity is often dismissed as populism – its teeming crowds as thrill-seekers. In this, even today, the National Gallery isn’t without guilt. Visitors queuing for this small but punchy exhibition are given a leaflet to read as they wait, encouraging them to embark on a treasure hunt to find the sources of Landy’s references. For good or ill, the gallery is attempting to attract and educate what it sees as a new audience, but by doing so it only risks patronising its patrons.