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Roy McMakin

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Roy McMakin
Born
Roy McMakin

1956
Lander, Wyoming, United States
NationalityAmerican
EducationUniversity of California, San Diego (BA) (MA)
Roy McMakin, Untitled (Wooden Toilet), 2005, oiled holly, 66 x 32 x 30 inches.
File:Untitled (Writing Table and Chair) - detail.jpg
A detail of Roy McMakin's Untitled (Writing Table and Chair)

Roy McMakin (born 1956 Lander, Wyoming) is a Seattle-based artist, designer, furniture maker, and architect. His furniture bridges the gap between art and design. He began his studies at the Museum Art School in Portland, but soon transferred to the University of California, San Diego, where he completed a BA in 1979 and an MA in 1982. At UCSD, he studied conceptual art making, under the likes of Allan Kaprow, Manny Farber, Jean-Pierre Gorin, and Patricia Patterson. In 1987, he opened his first showroom on Los Angeles' Beverly Boulevard, called Domestic Furniture Co. Though the showroom closed in 1995, it remains online today and has resumed production with Big Leaf Manufacturing. Additionally, his work has been featured in solo-exhibitions at galleries and museums, he has designed entire houses, and increased the production of his furniture for his showroom. His most recent retrospective was a 20-year survey of the sculptor and furniture designer's oeuvre at the University of Washington's Henry Art Gallery in 2005.[1]

Roy McMakin is represented exclusively by Garth Greenan Gallery, New York.[2]

Artistic Career

Influences

McMakin's furniture hints at influences from particular architects, designers, artists, and larger trends in American furniture design. His designs echo the Arts and Crafts tradition, Shaker designs, Art Deco and '50s Functional styles, and even mass-produced American commercial furniture.[3] He also admired architect Irving Gill, a pioneer of early 20th century pre-modern design, the sensitive wood worker, George Nakashima, and artist Scott Burton. In fact, he lived in the 1917 Hancock Park house designed by Irving Gill. Of Gill's house, McMakin said "It seems to be charged with the element of time, that domesticates whatever was off or unusual about the work when it first appeared. […] Small, simple houses need to come back in. We need to be more sparing in the way we spend our natural resources. We need to be caring about the natural limits of our environment." [3] His professor, Allan Kaprow, taught him the basics of conceptual art making and provided him with an artistic community in which to experiment. Some critics have likened his taste for minimalism to the great minimalist artists, such as Sol Lewitt and Donald Judd.[4] While other historians have placed him in an artistic lineage that includes West Coast natives John McLaughlin, Robert Irwin, and Charles Ray.[5]

Style

Some of his pieces are entirely non-functional like Untitled (Wooden Toilet), which, as its title suggests, is an unpainted wooden toilet that serves most usefully as a witty conversation piece more so than an actual toilet. Many of his pieces are inspired by visual and verbal puns and other conceptual conceits: a boudoir in which every drawer is painted a different shade of white and every drawer knob is a slightly different size; or a white shag rug with a black square at its center that has had a quarter of its area shaved away showing that in order for the graphic flatness of the square to be realized, black thread must permeate the entire thickness of the rug, drawing our attention to the three-dimensionality of something that we ordinarily perceive as two-dimensional. McMakin’s art forces us to focus on the ontological complexities of furniture that, while it occupies the same space as sculpture, is not culturally recognized as such. Another example would be his Untitled (Writing Table and Chair), which, while fully functional, is painted a bright pink, making the table and chair appear more as an objet d'art than an actual desk. McMakin's furniture designs first came to public attention in 1987 through his Domestic Furniture showroom on Los Angeles' Beverly Boulevard. That store closed in 1994 when he moved to Seattle to be closer to the woods with which he was working, but selected pieces from that period are still manufactured by his Seattle workshop.

According to curator Michael Darling, McMakin’s intellectual tack to furniture was informed by his artistic education at the University of California, San Diego, which “was a hotbed of artistic engagement with the everyday. From Allan Kaprow, inventor of the Happening, to domestic conceptualist Eleanor Antin, environmental art pioneers Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison… the UCSD faculty espoused boundary-breaking, experimental approaches to art-making.”[6] This boundary-breaking extends to McMakin's growing body of architectural work with his firm Domestic Architecture. Beginning with remodels of homes and office spaces in the 1990s, the artist now has a portfolio of ground-up houses that take his artistic concerns to a new level of ambition and complexity. Notable within the contemporary architectural scene, McMakin's homes freely embrace vernacular idioms, but utilize them in a way that is neither ironic, nostalgic, nor ideological. Borrowing from a wide variety of sources to best address the site, climate, or client's taste and personality, the homes are as engaging to "read" and "deconstruct" from an intellectual standpoint as they are intuitively functional. McMakin's architecture neatly dovetails with his other pursuits in furniture and sculpture, held together by an overarching investigation of how perception influences meaning.

McMakin has been the subject of exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle; and the Portland Art Museum. In 2010, Skira Rizzoli published a comprehensive monograph on McMakin, When Is a Chair Not a Chair.

Performance

While still at UCSD, McMakin also staged performance pieces that related to furniture. These performances asked questions about the body's relationship to furniture and, perhaps, the world at large. His first performance, in 1980, was titled "Love in a Charles Eames Chair." Of the performance McMakin said:

Love in a Charles Eames Chair was about my dual attraction for order and style and messiness. I was thinking of the [Eames-designed] Rosewood lounge chair, and one was in the pice. […] I was pointing out that it was hard to fuck in that chair, that it implied an optimism that was ultimately rigid and didn't allow a messy circumstance, which life is kinda all about."[5]

Exhibition History

Solo Exhibitions

1980

  • Built-Ins and Love in a Charles Eames Chair (performance), Sushi, San Diego, CA
  • Things from or for Somebody’s Home, Mandeville Annex Gallery, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA

1981

  • Supine in the Arroyo (performance), Sushi, San Diego, CA

1982

1986

  • Tables, Drawings and Photographs, Quint Gallery, San Diego, CA, May 31–July 5

1987

  • Everything: An Exhibition of Surfaces and Containers, Quint Gallery, San Diego, CA, February 5–February 28

1987–1988

1992

  • Domestic Furniture: Products & Prototypes of Roy McMakin, Felicita Center for the Arts, Escondido, CA

1997

  • Roy McMakin, Marc Foxx, Los Angeles, CA, November 22–December 20

1999

2000

  • When is a door a jar?, Marc Foxx, Los Angeles, CA, September 9–October 7

2001

  • Space, Feature Inc., New York, NY, January 19–February 24
  • 2 to, Quint Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA, February 23–March 17

2003

  • a bookcase, a sculpture, some drawings and a belt buckle, James Harris Gallery, Seattle, WA, October 9–November 15
  • A Table, Two Chairs, A Small Chest, One Large Painting and Several Drawings, Quint Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA, May 31–July 19

2003–2004

2004

  • Roy McMakin: Chest, Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles, CA, September 18–October 28

2005

  • Residential Line, Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, NY, September 17–October 29
  • Lequita Faye Melvin, Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, NY, September 17–October 29
  • Roy McMakin: A Slat-back Chair, San Diego State University Art Gallery, San Diego, CA, April 4–May 11

2006

  • Actual, James Harris Gallery, Seattle, WA, November 16–December 22
  • Roy McMakin: Furniture, Marc Selwyn/Domestic, Los Angeles, CA, March 4–April 19

2006–2007

  • Paintings with Chairs and Sculptures of Chairs, Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR, September 30, 2006–January 14, 2007

2007

  • Roy McMakin: A White Table and A Black Table, Each Depicted in Photographs and Sculpture, Quint Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA, September 7–October 13

2007–2008

  • Roy McMakin: A Breadbox and Mug, Each Depicted in Sculpture and Photography, Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin, TX, December 1, 2007–January 19, 2008

2008

  • Purplish, James Harris Gallery, Seattle, WA, October 2–November 8
  • For, Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, NY, May 3–July 3
  • Some Things, James Kelly Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM, June 19–August 16

2009

  • Roy McMakin, Bellevue Community College, Bellevue, WA, February 18–March 18
  • Joy and Reffry: A Collaborative show by Roy McMakin and Jeffry Mitchell, Pulliam Gallery, Portland, OR, September 2–September 26
  • Another Kountry, Established & Sons Gallery, London, February 4–March 31

2010

  • Five Chairs and Ten Tables, Ambach and Rice, Seattle, WA, November 5–December 5
  • Roy McMakin: When is a Chair Not a Chair?, Christina Grajales Gallery, New York, NY, May 6–July 2
  • In and On, Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin, TX, March 24–May 15

2010–2011

  • Other Chest of Drawers & Other People, International Artist-in-Residence: New Yorks 10.3, Artpace, San Antonio, TX, November 18, 2010–January 9, 2011

2012

  • A Few Drawings I Made for a Show at Lora's Gallery, Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin, TX, June 30–August 11
  • I Continue to Believe in the Potential of Expressing Sorrow and Hope Through Furniture, Western Bridge, Seattle, WA, April 28–July 28
  • Two Chairs, Two Chests of Drawers, Two Pieces of Fabric and Two Tables, Ambach and Rice, Los Angeles, CA, January 7–February 4
  • Roy McMakin: Middle, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT, January 29–June 10

2013

  • ROY MCMAKIN: Some Drawings and a Table, Quint Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA, August 3–September 7
  • Roy McMakin: Two Chairs (one green, one black), a Chest of Drawers, a Table, a Little Stool, a Photograph and a Few Drawings, Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco, CA, February 21–March 29

2014

  • Domestic Furniture by Roy McMakin, Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin, TX, September 13–November 15

Group Exhibitions

1982

  • Carol Mavor and Roy McMakin, Jewish Community Center Gallery, San Diego, CA

1984

  • Significant Others, Patty Aande Gallery, San Diego, CA, September 8–October 6
  • Contextual Furnishings: Isermann, McMakin, Vaughn, Mandeville Annex Gallery, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA, April 20–May 20
  • Three from Paris, Three from LA, Angles Gallery, Santa Monica, CA

1985

  • A San Diego Exhibition: Forty-Two Emerging Artists, La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA, March 23–April 28
  • To the Astonishing Horizon, LAVA (Los Angeles Visual Arts), Los Angeles, CA, January 21–February 15
  • Wood, Quint Gallery, San Diego, CA, June 22–July 27

1986

  • New Visions in Contemporary Art: The RSM Company Collection, March 21–May 4

1997

  • Marc Foxx, Los Angeles, CA, June 7–July 5
  • Quint Gallery, La Jolla, CA, March 7–April 4

1997–1998

  • Simple Form, Henry Art Gallery, Faye G. Allen Center for the Visual Arts, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, November 13, 1997–February 1, 1998

1998

  • Yoyogaga, Feature Inc., New York, NY, November 10–November 28
  • Home Sweet Home, Transamerica Building, San Francisco, CA
  • LA Current: The Canvas is Paper, Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Culture Center, Los Angeles, CA, June-September

2000

  • National Design Triennial: Design Culture Now, Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, March 7–August 6
  • Fast Forward: The Shape of Northwest Design, Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA, March 25–June 18

2000–2001

2001

  • Best of the Season: Selected Highlights from the 2000–01 Manhattan Exhibition Season, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT, September 23–December 30
  • Contemporary Collectors XVI, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla, CA, January 18–May 1
  • Marc Foxx, Los Angeles, CA, March 30–April 24
  • Fast Forward: The Shape of Northwest Design, Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA, March 25–June 18

2003

  • Small Scale Sculpture and Anonymous Tantra Paintings on Paper, Feature Inc., New York, NY, May 10–June 14
  • Fright Wig, Feature Inc., New York, NY, November 1–December 19
  • Mighty Graphitey, Feature Inc., New York, NY, June 19–August 8

2003–2005

  • Baja to Vancouver: The West Coast and Contemporary Art, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA, October 9, 2003–January 4, 2004; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla, CA, January 22, 2004–May 15, 2004; Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia, June 6, 2004–September 6, 2004; CCA *Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, California College of Arts, San Francisco, CA, October 6, 2004–January 10, 2005

2004–2005

  • Specific Objects: The Minimalist Influence, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, September 25, 2004–September 3, 2005

2006

  • Furnishing Assumptions, Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, CA, July 13–August 19

2007

  • As It Seems, Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, September 6-October 20
  • Useless, Project 4, Washington, D.C., August 3
  • Viewfinder, Henry Art Gallery, Faye G. Allen Center for the Visual Arts, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, July 14–December 30

2007–2008

  • Out of this World: Shaker Design Past, Present, and Future, Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, VT, June 16–October 28, 2007; The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design and Culture, New York, NY, March 13–June 15, 2008

2009

  • QUINT: Three Decades of Contemporary Art, California Center for the Arts Museum, Escondido, CA, August 15–December 31

2010

  • Design Miami/Basel 2010, Messe Basel, Basel, Switzerland, June 14–19
  • Double Up Double Up, Quint Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA, June 11–July 3
  • Pleasure Point: Celebrating 25 Years of Contemporary Collectors, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla, CA, February 19–May 22

2011

  • Behind What It’s in Front Of: Sculptures and Videos by Roy McMakin and Paintings by John McLaughlin, Quint Contemporary, La Jolla, CA, May 21–July 16

2012

  • Temporary Structures, Walter and McBean Galleries, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA, September 14–December 15
  • Figuring Color, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston MA, February 17–May 20

2013

  • Against the Grain: Wood in Contemporary Art, Craft and Design, Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY, March 19–September 15

References

  1. ^ Kangas, Matthew (September 2005). "Roy McMakin at the Henry Art Gallery". Art in America. 93 (8): 163.
  2. ^ "Roy McMakin". Garth Greenan Gallery. Retrieved 28 July 2016.
  3. ^ a b Whiteson, Leon (January 12, 1990). "Odd and Ordinary". Los Angeles Times.
  4. ^ McDonald, Robert (February 21, 1987). "The Artist Behind the Ideas". Los Angles Times.
  5. ^ a b Holte, Michael Ned (2010). The Art of Roy McMAkin: When is a Chair not a Chair?. New York: Skira Rizzoli Publications. p. z.
  6. ^ Michael Darling, Roy McMakin: A Door as Meant as Adornment, (Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2003), 4.

Selected bibliography

  • Darling, Michael. Roy McMakin: A Door Meant as Adornment. Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2003.
  • Johnson, Ken. “Art in Review; Roy McMakin.” New York Times, October 21, 2005, sec. E.
  • McMakin, Roy. Charming Homes for Today: Drawings by Roy McMakin, 1996-2002. New York: Matthew Marks Gallery, 2003.
  • McMakin, Roy. A Month of Drawings in the Cursive Style! New York: Matthew Marks Gallery, 2003.
  • Yapelli, Tina. Roy McMakin: A Slat-back Chair. San Diego: San Diego State University, 2005.
  • McMakin, Roy. When is a Chair Not a Chair? New York: Skira Rizzoli, 2010.
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