A-U-T-O-matic
Roxy Paine’s painting machine at Portland Art Museum
Roxy Paine. PMU #2 acrylic on linen and board 36″ x 59″ x 6″ 2000
The Portland Art Museum, after muddling about in 18th and 19th century painting and decorative arts, is getting today. For the next few months, the Museum is running Roxy Paine’s Painting Manufacture Unit, a machine for making paintings. This Powerbook-controlled, very industrial machine sprays 16 gallons per minute of specially formulated white acrylic paint on canvas every 2 or 3 hours, building dozens of layers over a period of weeks.
Paine in this piece explores the interrelationships between machine time and materials time, between the program and randomness, between adhesion and gravity, as the heavy flows of paint form canyons and foothills.
My only quarrel with the work is that the canvas resembles bland cubicle fabric! Ick. The gallery shows “PMU 24,” completed in 2005. Between February 25 and May 28, when the show ends, the machine will make 5 more paintings, “PMU 25″ through “PMU 30.”
Visit the Museum for a few hours, check the programmed painting time when you first arrive, and plan your museum wanderings to correspond to the next painting cycle.
–Bob Wilcox
[Roxy Paine]
[Portland Art Museum]
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