Roxy Paine at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts
Psilocybe cubensis Field , 1997 (detail) 2200 unique hallucinogenic mushrooms polymer with lacquer and oil paint 4 1/4 x 328 x 5 1/3 inches March 15-April 26, 1997 In April, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts had its second exhibition of sculptures by Roxy Paine, a young artist whose work is some of the most exciting around. It speaks to the artist's role as maker, and to the sort of making, in variety and difference, that is his provenance. Paine's work connects artmaking to the theoretical and logistical methods employed passively by the artist in creating an active art object. Paine insists that his work is about nature and its potential. This recalls Harold Rosenberg's essay "The Anxious Object," which describes how any artwork which is opaque can work off of the viewer's anxiety to suggest ideas. In Paine's case, that idea is a sense of the mode of communication being formed. This language is invented in three ways: by an attempt at the organic simu