Rail: The brown paper is industrially produced, and in that way, it corresponds with your work from the seventies, like 2, 4, 6, 8 (1969\/70). Were you thinking about making that connection when you worked on these?<\/p>\n
Rockburne: Well, as you know, I\u2019ve been involved with paper for most of my life as an artist. Paper always seems so magical to me, but I don\u2019t use nostalgia. That isn\u2019t that part of my life.<\/p>\n
Rail: Notably, these are called drawings. These are not assemblages or collages. Can you say a word about that distinction for you?<\/p>\n
Rockburne: I don\u2019t have to. It\u2019s a feeling. It can\u2019t be translated into words.<\/p>\n
Rail: So when you were working on these pieces, how did you sense that the arrangements that you were coming to were the arrangements that you wanted to present?<\/p>\n
Rockburne: That\u2019s all intuitive. I don\u2019t think when I work. Like I said, I think before and I think afterward. But while I\u2019m working, it\u2019s all intuitive.<\/p>\n
Rail: A sense of geometry comes through, and of course the folds of the bag resonate with some of your most well-known works, like the Drawing Which Makes Itself (ca. 1973), or in the show, there are two pieces from the series on Egypt.<\/p>\n
Rockburne: You know, the work just comes out of nowhere in a way, but the nowhere is, of course, me.<\/p>\n
Rail: The bags have dates stamped on them, September 11, which of course\u2014especially because we\u2019re in New York\u2014makes me think of the twin towers. Was that intentional?<\/p>\n
Rockburne: It\u2019s part of the identity of the paper bag, that\u2019s all. My work is not about symbolism or narrative. It never has been. It\u2019s about pure, raw feeling.<\/p>\n
Rail: What is it like to have work from the seventies, like 2, 4, 6, 8, in the same gallery as your brand-new work?<\/p>\n
Rockburne Well, it feels like my life. My work contains my emotional life. I like the title of the show, Time Measures Itself, because that really discusses what we\u2019re saying philosophically from another level, and that\u2019s really true.<\/p>\n
Rail: Time being something we rely on as constant, but also something we know to feel malleable.<\/p>\n
Rockburne: Yes. It\u2019s so strange for me because almost no one from my peer group is alive. My generation is pretty much gone, and I feel alone. When you\u2019re alone, time also moves differently. I think that\u2019s part of the reason for the title. I didn\u2019t spend a lot of time thinking about it, it just came into my mind, and I felt it was right.<\/p>\n
Rail: And you have a new sculpture in the exhibition\u2014<\/p>\n
Rockburne: Yes, it\u2019s called Infinity (2025\/26).<\/p>\n
Rail: That\u2019s interesting. It certainly rubs against the concept of time measuring itself.<\/p>\n
Rockburne: It was named before it was made. I mean, I have no idea how my creative process works, you know?<\/p>\n
Rail: Its component parts include two tires, two sawhorses, and two oars. Six objects in total.<\/p>\n
Rockburne: I knew that I had to get those oars, but where do you get oars in New York? [Laughter] I ordered them from Amazon, and they came painted the right color, with oar locks on them and everything. I was stunned. It\u2019s a painter\u2019s sculpture. Painters have a different concept of sculpture than sculptors.<\/p>\n
Rail: I can\u2019t help but make a connection to transportation. To me the oars correspond to movement over water, the tires to movement over land. The sawhorses, well, that\u2019s a bit less direct.<\/p>\n
Rockburne: I\u2019ve been using sawhorses to hold up tables all through my life. They aren\u2019t metaphorical or symbolic. I picked those out, specially. I love their red joints.<\/p>\n
Rail: Yes, they do have an incredible pop. And I noticed there\u2019s a brick in one of the tires.<\/p>\n
Rockburne: Yes<\/p>\n
Rail: It seems both stabilizing, but also\u2014<\/p>\n
Rockburne That\u2019s what it\u2019s for. But it\u2019s also just damn beautiful, brick against rubber\u2014that\u2019s beautiful.<\/p>\n
Rail: The colors in the piece\u2014blue, white, and red\u2014immediately connect to other works in the show. The color-pencil lines, for instance, in the vellum piece, Study for Discourse (1978). But also the blue oars are a similar shade of blue to the lines in your \u201cEgyptian Paintings.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rockburne: Yes. I know what you mean, but I didn\u2019t intend for that. These kinds of connections arise because my way of working hasn\u2019t changed, even though I\u2019ve gotten older. It\u2019s a body of work, my life\u2019s work, and the body talks to itself. [Laughter]<\/p>\n
Rail: What about the tires? How did you decide they should be white?<\/p>\n
Rockburne: First of all, I think tires are so beautiful. They\u2019re a manufactured thing, and there\u2019s something about the demands of what it means to be a tire that make it beautiful. As for why white, I just knew. It was something I just knew.<\/p>\n
Rail: It changes the object\u2014<\/p>\n
Rockburne: Of course it changes it, and yet it makes it more itself.<\/p>\n
Rail: Right. The tire is no longer defined by its utility. It becomes an aesthetic object, and so its formal aspects\u2014it\u2019s hollowness, it\u2019s circularity\u2014come to define it.<\/p>\n
Rockburne: Yes, I love the black inside and the white outside. It took many coats of paint\u2014more than you\u2019d think! [Laughter] And it creates a contradiction, which gives the work a bit of tension, like when somebody fucks the wrong person.<\/p>\n
Rail: How do you generate these titles?<\/p>\n
Rockburne: I don\u2019t know, but a lot of thought has gone into it, and a lot of living. This sculpture came about within the last two years, but I\u2019ve been developing it for five years in various ways that I would then reject, and then I\u2019d go back to it, and change something, and then change something else and go back to it, and so on.<\/p>\n
Rail: Were you working on the sculpture and the brown paper bag drawings in tandem?<\/p>\n
Rockburne: The sculpture goes back further.<\/p>\n
Rail: I see. How did you realize, after so many iterations, that you had found the right combination of materials and orientation?<\/p>\n
Rockburne: It\u2019s not easy. I changed the sawhorses several times. Ultimately it\u2019s a feeling I get, which comes from the body\u2019s intuition and knowledge.<\/p>\n
Rail: Does that connect back to what you were saying earlier, about it being a religious feeling?<\/p>\n
Rockburne: I believe in a higher power. I don\u2019t believe that I have been in full control of my own life. I believe that there\u2019s a higher power that both helps and leads me, and I have to listen to it. And it\u2019s beautiful.<\/p>\n
Rail: I imagine at some points in your life it\u2019s easier to follow, and at some points it\u2019s harder.<\/p>\n
Rockburne: Yes, but it\u2019s not even about easier or harder. It\u2019s just there. It\u2019s a part of me. There is some force that informs me somehow\u2014I don\u2019t quite understand it, and I don\u2019t ask for it. When I begin to work, I have to clear the decks. I need to make sure I\u2019m not interrupted. The knowledge comes through the beauty of materials. But it\u2019s also like, God, am I blessed? You know, I started drawing when I was a kid and this thing would happen. It\u2019s like I wasn\u2019t in charge of what my hand was doing. It is amazing being an artist, because the knowledge that comes out of my hands is not something I\u2019m familiar with until I do it. It\u2019s quite an incredible experience.<\/p>\n
Rail: How does your awareness and attention to a higher power correspond with your love and appreciation for mathematics?<\/p>\n
Rockburne: You know, I just took it for granted that I was all of a piece. When I began to see that the world was put together in terms of mathematics, I was made both larger and smaller by that knowledge. I felt larger because it is a powerful insight to experience; smaller because I realized I had no control, you know? There was something bigger than me going on and I was a very small part of that bigger thing. It\u2019s like seeing the first sunset or the birth of a child. Theoretically you can understand it, but at the same time, it is miraculous and if you let it, it can change you.<\/p>\n
Rail: So in the studio, you need to balance a sort of material practicality, let\u2019s say, with an allowance for intuition, which of course can\u2019t be forced.<\/p>\n
Rockburne: It\u2019s demanding. Intuition is demanding. Words come second to me, intuition comes first, and I have to translate my intuition. It\u2019s like I\u2019m always speaking in two languages.<\/p>\n
Rail: What about risk? How do you feel that taking risks connects with this feeling or sense of being guided?<\/p>\n
Rockburne: It\u2019s not about risk, it\u2019s about know-how. What I feel is a sense of belief in my know-how.<\/p>\n
Rail: Do you feel when you\u2019re making work? Sometimes when you\u2019re making a work and making decisions about\u2014<\/p>\n
Rockburne: I never make decisions when I work. I make decisions before and after, but never when I work.<\/p>\n
Rail: Do you ever feel a sense of doubt about those decisions?<\/p>\n
Rockburne: Never, no. It\u2019s not that I know what I\u2019m doing, and yet, on another hand, I know exactly what I\u2019m doing. It\u2019s hard to put it into language, but it\u2019s the language of experience.<\/p>\n
Rail: The language of experience. I mean one word that comes to my mind is trust, and that you trust the choices, and you trust your intuition and you don\u2019t second guess them or question them.<\/p>\n
Rockburne: I don\u2019t trust it. I believe it\u2019s something that\u2019s guiding me. It\u2019s not about my trust. It\u2019s about belief; it\u2019s something bigger than me. I don\u2019t know what that is. It\u2019s bigger than me. It tells me what to do. It\u2019s extremely beautiful. It\u2019s so elegant and so beautiful that that beauty hurts, and that\u2019s why I could tell when it\u2019s real.<\/p>\n
Rail: How about the idea of bravery? Do you feel that that plays any part in your experience in the studio?<\/p>\n
Rockburne: No. I know what bravery is, and when it comes to work, it\u2019s not about bravery. It\u2019s something else. It\u2019s a gift. It\u2019s just a great gift. But I do wish I had ten more years to work. I would be more daring.<\/p>\n
Rail: How do you think about being more daring?<\/p>\n
Rockburne: Sexual. I think Arshile Gorky was pretty sexual. I\u2019d just like to state it in a way that it can\u2019t be denied, because I think art really is about sexuality and we\u2019ve lost that. To me, sexuality is identity, it\u2019s feeling, it\u2019s relationships\u2014it\u2019s the important thing.<\/p>\n
Rail: There are those who\u2019d say the only important topics for art and literature are sex and death.<\/p>\n
Rockburne: I disagree. How about life? How about love? On the deepest level, I experience my own work as a form of love.<\/p>\n
Rail: What kind of love? Sexual? Fraternal? Parental?<\/p>\n
Rockburne: None of those. It\u2019s more like a universal love. I feel that, and I\u2019ve always felt it, even as a child, I had a sense of love that came from the universe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rail: The brown paper is industrially produced, and in that way, it corresponds with your work from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183099,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[1149,3458,3457,3459,3456,2878,3461,3462,3455,17,1117,3465,749,75,84,83,2538,9,3463,24,63,3460,3464,905],"class_list":{"0":"post-183098","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-art","9":"tag-art-books","10":"tag-art-critic","11":"tag-art-reviews","12":"tag-artists","13":"tag-books","14":"tag-brooklyn-art","15":"tag-brooklyn-culture","16":"tag-contemporary-art","17":"tag-culture","18":"tag-dance","19":"tag-fiction","20":"tag-film","21":"tag-manhattan","22":"tag-manhattan-headlines","23":"tag-manhattan-news","24":"tag-music","25":"tag-new-york","26":"tag-new-york-art-scene","27":"tag-new-york-city","28":"tag-nyc","29":"tag-phong-bui","30":"tag-poetry","31":"tag-theater"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}