Reena Spaulings

In Reena Spaulings’s exhibition “Sea Landscapes,” an iRobot Scooba 450 floor-scrubbing machine paints large-format images. The robot’s algorithm reinterprets the dramatic landscapes of J. M. W. Turner by shuttling matte paints from the Estate Emulsion series of the manufacturers Farrow & Ball back and forth across the canvas. Resultant works from the “Sea Landscapes” and “Bohemian Groove I” series (both 2015) on view have pathways, sharp angles, and circular patterns produced by each change in the device’s direction.

Even if conventional painting strategies are here abnegated, the sensor detects the limits of the canvas and will not overshoot the boundaries. The collective Reena Spaulings ventures a clever undermining of the conventional limits between production, distribution, and reception, through mopping—as much the depiction of an act that liberates from dominant models as it is the intrinsic, performative Gestus that inheres within it. In this case, the making visible of a third party alongside artist and work also thematizes the deployment of artistic intelligence in that the human brushstroke yields to a mechanical and automatic movement.

With the decision to chase the iRobot across the canvas, the author’s responsibility (as is so often the case with Reena Spaulings) is passed on. Clear authorship is finally established in the press release; there, the painting robot says, “I’m finished with my job and ready for the next.” The image is ready when the robot thinks it is.

Translated from German by Diana Reese.