ART CITIES:N.York- Roxy Paine

In his body of work, Roxy Paine mirrors natural processes, drawing increasingly on the tension between organic and man-made environments, between the human desire for order and nature’s drive to reproduce. Paine has said, “I’m interested in taking entities that are organic and outside of the industrial realm, feeding them into an industrial system, and seeing what results from that force-feeding. The end results are a seamless containment of these opposites.”

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Paul Kasmin Gallery Archive

Roxy Paine’s solo exhibition “Thermoplastic Flux” at Paul Kasmin Gallery is different from his other exhibitions, is the first that focuses solely on his works on paper.  Perceptible in virtually all of the drawings is a layering of imagery, ranging from the diagrammatic, to the topographic, to the pixelated.  Botanical forms, organic matter, and architectural plans are juxtaposed with portraits, real and imagined cartography, and industrial signs. Yet the drawings gradually reveal specific themes of containment, regulation, boundaries and mapping.  For the artist, the mapping serves as a metaphor for thought experiments working to understand complex structures, places, patterns and systems. The drawings are an experimental way to trace, catalogue, and visualize a mindset.  His approach to the paper is an extension of his sculptural process, as if it’s an initial encounter with a puzzle that may later be realized in three dimensions.   Finally, and crucially, the drawings provide evidence of the artist’s hand.   The verisimilitude of his finished sculptures is laborious and engaged, as virtually all of his sculptures are made carefully by hand but appear to be machine-made.  In the drawings, Paine’s dexterity as a draftsman is tangible and compelling in equal measure.

Info: Curator: by Judith Goldman, Paul Kasmin Gallery, 297 10th Avenue, New York, Duration: 15/9-22/10/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.paulkasmingallery.com