LAUNCHPROJECTS - The first time I experienced Roxy Paine's work was in 2003 when I was volunteering as a docent at SITE Santa Fe. His solo exhibition Second Nature featured computer-driven automated art making machines as well as his hand made mushrooms, poppies, and poison ivy. Smart and elegant, I immediately responded to his work at to this day it remains among my favorite SITE Santa Fe exhibitions (including Juan Munoz, Janine Antoni, Gary Simons, and the group show Uneasy Space curated by former SITE curator Norah Kabat Dolan).
Paine's latest project at James Cohan Gallery, Distillation is in Paine's words (from a New York Times Review by Hillary M. Sheets) "a meditation on seeking purity, the pure essence of something, but at the same time the piece is very impure...It also relates to the way I’ve always thought about my process. How ideas come in coarse and ferment in the brain, and eventually are distilled out of that brew. It’s a map of the way humans constantly flit between different frames of mind and fields of knowledge.”
Also included in the show is an elaborate mushroom installation and drawings, paintings, and a maquette of the Distillation installation. A gorgeous and thoughtful exhibition - Roxy Paine (who incidentally attended the College of Santa Fe) continues to grow and expand his original lexicon that straddles the lines of art making and automation, beauty and industry, perfection and rupture.
Pictured: Roxy Paine in front of a mushroom installation at SITE Santa Fe, Distillation 2010.
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