Christopher Jagers

Sunday, April 30, 2006

Roxy Paine = Awesome

Above: Weed Choked Garden | 1998 - 2005 | thermoset plastic, polymer, oil paint

I have known about Roxy Paine for a while now, actually only his trees (pics below). But today I read a interview in Sculpture Magazine (May 2006) that widened my scope of what he does and made him one of my favorite artists working today. Here is an excerpt from Paine:

“I was interested initially in the idea of the tree as a language - in taking this majestic complex oraganic entity and breaking it down into its component parts and trying to look at it as a language, a language of systems and elements and rules by which those elements are used. I tried to delve in and learn this language by observation. Once I felt somewhat comfortable with the language, I did the first piece, Imposter. Each tree is a new story, a compelling entity, told with that language. The whole project is about permutations with that language. And of course, as I become familiar with the language, other things become interesting, like decay and death in the more recent trees and looking for new ways to use the language.”

I love his compulsive committment to understand structures in nature, perhaps because it relates to all the chaos theory I have been reading … but he is really figuring out complexities that continue to elude mathematicians - and doing it beautifully! He has a wide range of work that you can view James Cohan Gallery, or you can read another old interview with him at ArtInfo.