Roxy Paine, 16574172006C

Roxy Paine
16574172006C
2006
Acrylic on linen
16-5/8 x 13 x 3-1/2 inches (42.23 x 33.02 x 8.89 cm)

Provenance
Acquired directly from the artist by the current owner

About the Artwork

Executed in 2006, 16574172006c belongs to the ‘Paint Dipper’ works created in the context of the so-called ‘Machines' series. A result of Roxy Paine’s mind but also of a computerized process, each of these works has been generated by PMU (Painting Manufacture Unit), a ten-foot tall art-making machine designed by the artist to generate paintings by repeatedly and obsessively dipping a raw canvas into a vat filled with acrylic paint. Each of the works is dipped between 50 and 180 times and then subjected to a drying process that allows subsequent layers to adhere properly. Each individual ‘dip’ is recorded on the painting's surface as a horizontal, striated line.

Despite this seemingly automated production, the randomness of both the action of gravity and the drying process allow Paine to individualize each of the paintings with a unique silhouette, that of the uneven stalactites that provides the series with its original and distinctive aesthetics. It is precisely by using the motif of the stalactite that the artist reflects on the nature of geological processes, a theme that has long fascinated him. “Temporal relationships are inverted," Paine suggests, "creating stalactite incrustations at the bottom of the paintings in a process that normally takes many millennia…so from that perspective it's very quick. But the machines are also referencing automation and factory production. And from that position, they're extremely slow and plodding. I'm hoping to capture some strange in-between notion of time.”

About the Artist

Roxy Paine (b. 1966, New York) studied at both the College of Santa Fe in New Mexico and the Pratt Institute in New York. Since 1989, his work has been internationally exhibited and recent solo exhibitions include Natura Naturans, Villa Panza, Vernese (2015-16); Roxy Paine: Scumaks and Dendroids, Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City (2011); Roxy Paine on the Roof: Maelstrom, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (2009); Roxy Paine: PMU, curated by Bruce Guenther, Portland Museum of Art, Portland, OR (2006). Paine will be installing a new sculptural piece in San Francisco in 2018 to coincide with the opening of the Central Subway. This dramatic piece, in the artist's words, will be “an elegant line connecting earth to sky, people to underground systems and sculpture to city.”

Paine is included in prestigious public collections around the world such as Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA, Museum of Modern Art, NY, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.  He is the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.