Other Chest of Drawers & Other People

Roy McMakin

Exhibition: Nov 18, 2010 – Jan 9, 2011


Roy McMakin’s Other Chest of Drawers & Other People includes a collection of fabricated and found furniture objects and three video works that relate to the chest, in terms of home furnishings as well as human anatomy. His sculptures are mediated by people; collaborations with woodworkers and assistants form a significant feature of the exhibition. The artist’s intentional decision not to originate or construct any of the objects on display is notable. He used, instead, a set of subjective directions to guide this series of work, as well as his keen eye for design, spending hours rummaging through San Antonio thrift and furniture stores. Additionally he chose to push his photographic concepts of scale and perspective by introducing the elements of time and movement, leading to his first video pieces in 25 years.

On one side of the dimly lighted exhibition, three prominently placed video works present unusual viewpoints of ordinary activities: moving a piece of furniture, removing clothes from a drawer, and walking through a park on a sunny day. All of the videos are 1:1 scaled and feature multiple camera perspectives placed tangentially to create the illusion of a whole. The illusion, however, is short-lived as perceptual problems arise through developing narratives. In one sequence, we see the frontal view of a worn, off-white chest of drawers; the image then changes dramatically as a man and woman-their bodies cropped and fragmented by the cameras-push and pull the chest around to show 24 possible positions of the furniture item. The viewer gradually becomes aware of the placement of the cameras and the unique points of view they capture.

An interest in point of view is also at play in three works specially fabricated for McMakin’s exhibition. He hired three local woodworkers to respond to directions, loaded with elusive adverbs, to create a conceptual piece based on the following text: BUILD A HANDSOME FIVE DRAWER CHEST. THE DRAWERS NEED TO BE THE RIGHT SIZE TO STORE CLOTHES, AND THE OVERALL CHEST APPROPRIATELY SCALED FOR A TYPICAL BEDROOM. IT SHOULD BE CAREFULLY CONSTRUCTED, NICELY PROPORTIONED, AND PAINTED A PRETTY BLUE. The ambiguity of the artist’s instructions pose the problem: How does one define “handsome,” “appropriately,” “typical,” “carefully,” “nicely,” and “pretty”? By taking advantage of the subjectivity of language and perception, McMakin engages the designer/fabricator collaboration in a different way, enabling the insights and personality of the woodworkers to be showcased.

The third series of furniture-based works in the exhibition features three found chests of drawers installed as formal wall sculptures. By hanging these pieces at painting height, rotating them 90 and 180 degrees, and playing black and white components off each other, the works move away from their domestic associations toward a kind of abstraction reminiscent of the minimalist works of California painter John McLaughlin. Through elevation and alteration, McMakin not only highlights the furniture’s abstract nature and the figure ground interaction inherent within, but encourages the reexamination of one’s relationship with common home furnishings.

Artist

Roy McMakin

Seattle, Washington, USA

Roy McMakin’s artwork crosses many disciplines; his practice integrates furniture, architecture, sculpture, photography, and installation. Over the course of his career, he has moved back and forth between construction and documentation of domestic objects and buildings. His exhibition Roy McMakin: A Breadbox and a Mug, Each Depicted in Sculpture and Photography (2007) involved the artist painstakingly photographing quadrants of home furnishings then splicing them together to make a 1:1 scale whole, revealing the imperfections of the objects and our perceptions.
McMakin received his MFA in 1982 from University of California at San Diego, La Jolla. He has had solo exhibitions at Ambach & Rice, Seattle, Washington (2010); Cristina Grajales Inc., New York, New York (2010); Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin, Texas (2010); Established & Sons, London, England (2009); Matthew Marks Gallery, New York (2008); James Kelly Contemporary, Santa Fe, New Mexico (2008); and James Harris Gallery, Seattle (2008). His work has been included in many group exhibitions, including As It Seems, Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto, Canada (2007); Shaker Design: Out of this World, Shelburne, Vermont (2007); Furnishing Assumptions, Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, California (2006); and Specific Objects: The Minimalist Influence, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla (2005).

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Curator

Michael Darling

Seattle, Washington, USA / Chicago, Illinois, USA

Prior to his appointment in Chicago, he served as the Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seattle Art Museum from 2006-2010. While there, he organized distinguished exhibitions, including Gaylen Hansen, Three Decades of Painting (2007-08), Su-Mei Tse (2008), Dennis Oppenheim: Safety Cones (2008), and Target Practice: Painting Under Attack 1949-78 (2009). Darling also served as an assistant curator at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art beginning in 1998, where he organized Superflat, in collaboration with the artist Takashi Murakami (2001); Seattle artist/architect Roy McMakin’s first museum survey (2002); and Painting in Tongues, a survey of single artists whose practices span many mediums (2006). Darling received his Ph.D. from University of California, Santa Barbara, on the furniture of 20th-century American designer George Nelson.
 

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