Armada, Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, 2009
Curator: Risa Puleo
Armada, Blanton Museum, University of Texas at Austin, 2009Armada, Blanton Museum, University of Texas at Austin, 2009Armada, Blanton Museum, University of Texas at Austin, 2009Armada, Blanton Museum, University of Texas at Austin, 2009Armada, Blanton Museum, University of Texas at Austin, 2009Armada, Blanton Museum, University of Texas at Austin, 2009Armada, Blanton Museum, University of Texas at Austin, 2009Armada, Blanton Museum, University of Texas at Austin, 2009
The final installation from the Mobile Observation series, Armada was commissioned by the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas, Austin. Working with curator Risa Puleo, Raskin created Armada in the curator's backyard with a team of assistants and then assembled it within the Museum. The forms Raskin produced are loosely based on field research conducted at "The Boneyard," also known as the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG), a 1,000-square-mile facility for decommissioned air and spacecraft at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Raskin synthesized photographs they took at "The Boneyard" into collages that resist pictorial tropes such as horizon lines and relational scale. These collages set the stage for the artist's first full-scale painting installation, which abandons any linguistic signifiers or discrete objects referring to a specific location or function. Rather, the sculptures in the foreground of the installation are literal extensions of the immersive painting installation. The piece is organized according to a logic of multiple, abstracted vantage points that the viewer accesses from within the space, creating conditions for the viewer's perspective to shift based on their physical embodiment within the installation. The mechanics of viewing a painting from within a painting serve as a formal translation of the artist's realization that their presence and perspective altered the data gathered during their field research, shifting Raskin's art practice toward critical ethnography.
741, 2009. Collaged paper, graphite, pva glue. 16 x 21 inches
N 281, 2009. Collaged paper, graphite, pva glue. 17 x 22 inches
Boneyard dusk, 2010. Collaged paper, graphite, pva glue. 15 x 16 inches
NA / NDR 2009. Collaged paper, graphite, pva glue. 12 x 15 inches