Roxy Paine, Distillation, 2010.
The title evokes both the process of alchemy (to distill metals into gold), as well as processes of making alcohol and other drugs. Indeed, the work includes elements such as a large glass vile filled with dirt, and various tubes, that suggest chemical laboratories. The press release indicates that the work is also a “metaphor for the artist’s mental process,” in the way that ideas go through a similar process of distillation and refinement. In an interview with the artist published in BOMB magazine in 2009, Paine discusses an interest he has in “this drive that humans have to constantly break things down into their component parts and isolate them further and further…I have a desire to constantly break things down in a critical way. I’m trying to examine it, why do we need to constantly break things down into component parts?” It appears as though this interest in components and isolation has manifested itself in Distillation. The installation provokes open metaphoric situations for processes such as oil refinement, forcing nature to bend to technology, the creative process itself, as well as the way that ideas move throughout the world and our bodies.
