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A
Conversation in the Studio About the Studio, with Roxy
Paine
Walking into Roxy Paine's studio
is like stumbling into a cellar. It's packed and jumbled
with machinery, tools, and supplies, and then there
are the mushrooms sprouting up between everything. When
your eyes adjust to the gloom (Paine isn't one for sunlight
indoors) you can discern that rather than chaos, order
reigns. Everything is organized and labeled. There is
a legion of shelves and rows of drawers, and even the
long orange extension cord is coiled perfectly beside
one of the massive raw wood columns throughout the room.
Proliferating on a series of
shelves, Roxy's most recent clusters of mushrooms are
organized in evolving stages of development. On the
bottom shelf are raw metal forms, above that on the
second shelf the rows of little mushrooms are covered
in pink plasticene sculpted with minute detail to create
each unique entity. Each higher shelf holds boards of
mushrooms that have evolved another step closer to perfection
and completion.
Part field scientist, Roxy knows
all the Latin names for the mushrooms he makes and goes
out into the woods to hunt them down and take casts
of them. His sculptures follow all the rules of natural
law, but push the bounds of natural size limits. He
views the fungi and the plants he sculpts as a system
as intricate and varied as language, which allow for
infinite combinations within the restraints of the ruling
order.
A feeling of tremendous control
pervades both his work and his space. With the plants
and mushrooms he plays the role of creator, making "improved"
natural forms that never deteriorate. Such variety,
such elaborate detail in a multitude that you have to
admire the patience and diligence, as well as the underhanded
effort to make serial replication so unique and different.
Crowding the center of the room
are two of the machines he has made that produce unique
artworks like manic automatons working for the sorcerer's
apprentice. The building itself used to be a sewing
factory, a sweatshop that was still in operation on
the floor above him when he moved in seven years ago.
Back then he had to live there too, and the sewing machines
started up at 7 a.m. and ran with no regular rhythm
for long hours. That's been an influence on the logistics
of his work - his machines are very quiet, rhythmic,
and easy to live with.
(continued)
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There's a machine for drawing,
which has a robotic ink dispenser that shuttles back
and forth over a huge table making big crude drawings,
like one with "damn damn damn" written across it thousands
of times in different sizes and densities of ink. The
painting machine produces gorgeous monochromes by dunking
canvases into white paint over and over until the drips
form toothy rows of stalactites that hang off the bottom
of the picture. Roxy mentions that he's been away for
the past couple of weeks in the desert, and the machine
has been dutifully laboring away so that there's a row
of small paintings almost ready to sell on the dipping
bar. Then there's the SCUMAK, a machine that dumps a
stream of hot colored plastic onto a conveyor belt to
form the slumping sculptures that fill the other shelves
in his studio not given over to tools or mushrooms.
And all Roxy has to do is push a button.
The intricate, exacting construction
of innumerable unique mushrooms or poppy flowers, and
the slowing of the machine's mechanical production are
like meditations on the irregularity and plodding speed
of nature. A vital difference between the creation of
life and his sculptures is the materials used - Roxy
uses plastic and steel and his work will probably hang
around looking beautiful forever. He speaks lucidly
and enthusiastically about the history and application
of plastics, describing how they replaced fragile or
rare natural materials like ivory for combs. Their rapid
improvement made the processed natural materials obsolete.
His work represents a further step for plastics, an
actual encroachment on the natural world, replacing,
"improving," natural forms and processes through permanence
and durability while retaining much of the uniqueness
and beautiful detail that mass production is unable
to replicate.
His ultra-real replications of
mushrooms and flowers are often installed in groups
on the walls like paintings. Those aren't so big, though
lately he's been making full-size trees from stainless
steel. There's one, Bluff, in Central Park right now
as part of the Whitney Biennial. Roxy says, "Whenever
I'm making a new piece, I have to think about whether
it will fit through the door."
For four months this past winter,
however, Roxy has had the funding to rent his ideal
studio space to complete Bluff. This dream spot of his
is a windowless old metal warehouse in Red Hook. There's
no heat, no plumbing and a porta-potty outside on the
loading dock, but he set up a basketball court in the
yard used to assemble the tree. That's more important
for him than all the missing amenities, and we all had
to shoot a little hoop together after the interview.
The space is enormous, but if
he had the time he'd probably fill it up too. When we
were there just a few things were scattered around including
the branches of another, much bigger, stainless steel
tree. The tangle of limbs was strewn across the floor
like an impossible puzzle - it looked like you could
never put it back together, unless you were Roxy Paine.
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