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ROXY PAINE |
PMU #24 was created by a machine that Roxy Paine calls the PMU (Painting Manufacture Unit). The PMU is intended, in part, as a humorous commentary on critics in the 1950s who referred to paintings as "events" that were "performed" by artists. Here, the entire artistic process is mechanized, and the artist is removed from the creative act.
Made from industrial and technological materials, the PMU can be seen as a sculpture, but it is also a purely functional object. The machine operates according to a computer program written by Paine: a hose with a nozzle is attached to a vat of acrylic paint, and gently "throws" jets of paint at the canvas at random intervals. Since there can be more than seventy layers of paint in any painting, each artwork can take weeks to complete. The excess paint drips into a trough to be recycled and used later. Paine explained his decision to use a machine to create his work, saying, "It stems, I think, from being a control freak, but understanding that control without its opposite is uninteresting." Although Paine has a general idea of what a finished painting will look like, he can never predict its exact appearance.
Paine's PMU paintings have been compared to abstract landscapes. Although the artist finds inspiration in natural wonders such as Zion National Park in Utah, he has also commented that, "even more than evoking specific landscape features, there's something about the process of how landscapes are formed." Paine views machines as microcosms of the processes of nature, and the forces he uses--heating, cooling, compression, and dispersal--are also geologic forces that work together to form the landscape.
Paine's other projects include machines that he calls SCUMAKS (sculpture-making machines), in which a spigot dispenses layers of heated polyurethane onto a conveyor belt, and a Drawing Machine, in which a nozzle is attached to a series of ink bottles, and moves on a track system across a piece of paper.
– Mariann Smith, Curator of Education