MATERIAL ANAMNESIS: THE SUBVERSIONOF ROUTINE OBJECTS. NEW WORK BYMANNY KRAKOWSKI

  Manny Krakowski’s exhibition, Material Anamnesis: the subversion of routine objects, will open at the Robert Madsen Gallery this Saturday, October 13, 2012. Manny is a Los Angeles based sculptor who found a temporary home in rural Stanwood, Washington, working at the Pilchuck Glass School. I asked him why he was leaving the Northwest for LA, and what it was like working on campus in the offseason. He told me stories about living in the woods, working at Pilchuck, and where he plans to go from here. Manny’s artwork focuses his personal connection and dependence on inanimate objects and obsolete technology. He works methodically, re-imagining scissors, cameras, and measuring tapes as projections of light, and he carefully replicates lemons and cassette tapes in hot pink rubber.

LP: Let’s talk about your hot pink rubber cassette tapes. 

MK: That color seems to be an attention getter; people’s eyes are attracted to it. I think they have a fleshy quality, which takes it out of context.

LP: Have you made any glass tapes? 

MK: I have not. I’ve thought about it. I’m excited about the level of detail I can get with rubber. I’m working on this piece about the degradation of technology, and these tapes are disintegrating and falling apart. I really love how the rubber captures this falling apartness and even though it’s different from cold glass, I think they have a lot of similarities when glass is hot. Glass is very flexible when it’s hot, and I like how the rubber is flexible, so it captures the same energy as glass. 

LP: I was on your website and you have a lot of text about the Key sculptures, have you been making them the longest? 

MK: No, the keys are the first real study into making sculptural work. It was something I could work on by myself, and that gave me the time to investigate the form I was going for, and some of the intricacies of the shape, and learning the techniques to get where I wanted to go. I have been working on those for a while. I made an installation with them, and I felt like it was time to stop. It represented spaces of a calendar with a key on each day of the week, representing opportunities that we might take for those days. My new work is kind of a balance between making glass, which can be a production based material, to make work out of glass to make a living or an idea, for me, once the idea is finished, or I learn how to accomplish something aesthetically, I get a little bored with it and want to move on. The newest work I’ve been doing is the Chairs, and I’m trying to incorporate those with some other materials. I’m trying to stay away from making the same object over and over again.

 LP: Are you done with the Keys?

 MK: For now. Unless I need to revisit it for another project