15/11/2014
Graham Collins
Soloway, New York
Clean Room. The paintings on view were designed completely from the ground up, utilizing research into traditions of art conservation, strategies of authorial distance, and fabrication methods. The works incorporate marks made hundreds of years ago, marks made over the course of a century, and brand-new marks.
The terms “clean room” and “clean room design” are used as metaphors for the gallery space and art production. The paintings on view were designed completely from the ground up, utilizing research into traditions of art conservation, strategies of authorial distance, and fabrication methods. Each work is dated 2014 and signed by the artist, sometimes twice. The works incorporate marks made hundreds of years ago, marks made over the course of a century, and brand-new marks.
Clean Room is an experiment in stopping time. Equal weight is given to the lives of these paintings before, during, and after the exhibition. Clean Room is an archeology of imagined spaces based on real life. It is a celebration of the hired hand, the Sunday painter, the amateur inventor, the armchair philosopher of digital space, a schizophrenic forgery, histrionic minimalisms, the rusted-out muffler of the mid-Atlantic, the broken taillight of the Pacific coast, the dented fender of Western Europe.
The exhibition design follows a pragmatic approach. A heat-welded vinyl floor is installed throughout the gallery. There is a new, wall-sized oil painting of an old, wood-sided wall. Opposing this is an image of the same wall appearing as it may have the day it was built. This pairing is echoed in a set of shaped canvas works, some made from re-stretching old paintings, others from stretching canvas covered in archival inkjet. This installation will be rotated periodically over the course of the show.
Ultimately this is a show about light and space and time and fate.
A “cleanroom” or “clean room” is an environment, typically used in manufacturing or scientific research, with a low level of environmental pollutants such as dust, airborne microbes, aerosol particles, and chemical vapors.
“Clean room design” (also known as the “Chinese wall” technique) is the method of copying a design by reverse engineering and then recreating it without infringing any of the copyrights and trade secrets associated with the original design.
Graham Collins was born in Washington, DC in 1980. He received his BFA from The Corcoran School of Art and an MFA from Bard College. Collins' artwork routinely incorporates a wide range of disciplines, including painting, sculpture, ceramics, woodworking, and architectural intervention. His work has been featured at The Journal Gallery (NY), Derek Eller Gallery (NY), The Corcoran Museum (Washington DC), and Tät (Berlin), among others. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Opening Sunday, November 16, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m.
Soloway
348 South 4th Street, Bklyn
Open Saturday and Sunday 12-5 and by appointment