This show was more focused than Roxy's last one at Feldman, 31 Mercer St, NYC. Though thereagain seemed to be a range of styles, commonalities in the work, and especially in the ideas addressed, that were soon apparent A large sculptural floor piece at the entrance, "Model for an Abstract Sculpture," resembled a plastic model kit as it comes out of the box, unpainted and ready to be broken apart and assembled. It suggested that much art today is merely built by assembling pre-existing ideas. This theme was echoed by "Model Painting," which offered plastic replicas of impasto brush strokes (also ready to break and assemble) and by "Untitled (Specimens)," in which plastic brush strokesand drips were mounted in a display case, each numbered, recalling both a didactic museum display, and a "paint by numbers" system. Across the gallery there seemed to be growing a field of psilocybin mushrooms. Alas, they were plastic replicas, painstakingly painted and "planted" in the gallery floor by the artist. Another trompe l'oeil caseoffered "Poison Ivy Field (Toxicodendrn radicans)." So realistic werethese, that one had to ask if they were real, and that advanced thequestion of what "real" means in art today. Is it poison, or psychogen? But the culminating question was posed by "Paint Dipper," a large kineticpiece controlled by a laptop computer. A canvas hung suspended above a rectangular "dipping" vat. Eventually the lid to the vat popped open, and the canvas descended into a white latex paint mixture. It was thenwithdrawn by the computer and allowed to dry, and the cycle beganagain. On the wall was a canvas produced by five weeks of such dipping. The built up drips hung like stalactites from its bottom. Variations in theprogram for different paintings assured that no two white canvases wouldbe exactly alike: a sort of automated Ryman machine. The mechanization and commodification of art has rarely been expressedmore eloquently. Appropriately the canvas was the first piece to sell,testimony to Roxy's understanding of the art market. Asked about the sale, he quipped, "After all, it took me five weeks to paint it." Flash Light |