Roxy Paine at Ronald Feldman - Brief Article

It wouldn't be incorrect to say that Roxy Paine's work is about nature, just misleading. Using polymer rubber, aluminum and epoxy he painstakingly creates realistic statuarys of the natural world, of the like kind as fields of psilocybin mushrooms or poison ivy. His exhibits usually also include some sort of machine that counterfeits the notion of originality and the artist's "hand." single for example, created monochrome works by dint of repeatedly dipping a canvas into a vat of paint. Paine's juxtaposition of machine and "nature" is not as incongruous as it first looks since everything in his exhibits is manmade.

In his new New York show, Paine added fungous slime and crust fungi to his repertoire. sum of two units abstract "paintings"--one quite large--are actually polymer reproductions of fungi that are attached to the surface like expansions In Puffball Field, a bump of dusty misshapen spheres are scattered upon a carpet-covered table. In Fungus Formica Field, a range of fungi from mushrooms to puffballs present the appearances to sprout from an orange Formica-topped table. Extending the psychedelic implications of the hallucinogenic mushrooms is the amazing harvest a field of poppies--some in beautiful filled bloom, others dropping petals--that direct the eyes as if it has been not long ago trod through by workers. Vibrating Field combined the show's disparate themes of machine and nature: a vibrating metal table supports a large swatch of grassy tundra, evoking California's tremulous turf

The mechanical constituent in this show was SCUMAK (Auto plastic art Maker), a large computer-controlled contraption that slowly cause to foamed out shiny, white sculptures resembling stacks of pancakes. by the agency of varying such factors as the drying time for each extrud vesicle of thermoplastic before layering upon another, the machine "created" an unending series of unique statuarys Some of the stacks ooz to the side while others managed to stay almost consummately upright. Each sculpture took about five hours to finish, and one time completed was moved along a conveyor belt to make scope for the next.

Paine ironically proposes a sort of discourse upon the increasing denaturalization of nature and the mechanization of creativity. He strives to deceive the organ of vision but he intentionally undercuts his possess craftsmanship by revealing the artifice of his constructions. plane so, his nature works are in like manner impressively realistic they are not real different from the displays seen in natural-history museums. If what separates the sum of two units is a concept, is this conception sufficiently engaging? Ultimately, Paine is at his best in his more sardonic works that play upon ideas of originality.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group