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An amorphous mass pulls itself into existence, rises from its rubble, and accretes like a volcanic pile. The resulting sculpture is satisfyingly tactile and rocky. Its glossy yet sandy surface invites the viewer’s touch. Nooks and crannies guide the hand from bulks at the bottom to the tip, as the formation twists up and out of the floor. A bearded mask—a Man’s face—presides proudly yet indifferently at the top, face to face with you. |
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Nick Paparone. #1 (Self-Made Man Series), 2010. Polystyrene, textured spray paint, custom plastic mask, casters, wood. 5.8 x 2.5 x 2.5 ft. Courtesy of the artist.
IDOL: Face to Face with the Self-Made Man
Kate Meng Brassel
An amorphous mass pulls itself into existence, rises from its rubble, and accretes like a volcanic pile. The resulting sculpture is satisfyingly tactile and rocky. Its glossy yet sandy surface invites the viewer’s touch. Nooks and crannies guide the hand from bulks at the bottom to the tip, as the formation twists up and out of the floor. A bearded mask—a Man’s face—presides proudly yet indifferently at the top, face to face with you.
When I met Nick Paparone, I immediately recognized him from the face of his Self-Made Man and mumbled something about liking the mask. “Yeah,” he nodded. “I love persona.” Paparone’s work is a frank and unapologetic look at the construction of persona in the American moment, its mythology, its self-worship, and its multivalent potential. The Self-Made Man is part of an ongoing series that was initially displayed at Columbia’s Open Studios and started with a case of 96 plastic masks custom-made in the image of the artist’s face. The masked statue shown here appeared; then, a two-headed giant came on the scene, posing like a harlequin lumberjack. His twin heads ooze gold and each wears a man mask. Plugging into peculiarly American myths, these pieces present us with autopsies of the idolization of self-help, self-making, self-hood, and DIY. A short coincides with this growing series, mastering and complicating the universalizing language of mass media phenomena. Paparone envisioned Display Model for (Self-Made Man Series) Commercial as a trailer to be displayed on a “Best Buy flat screen” as an anecdote for the series. The first shot is the only moment in the entire Self-Made series that we glimpse the artist’s face. But he quickly dons a white mask and starts slathering on a face. The process is squishy, messy, fast, and cut with shots of spilling pink and black liquids, manicures, and hairless pits. He lights up, takes a quick drag, smears his face with thick white paint, and blows it dry. Saran wrap is peeled off and reveals the mask familiar from the Self-Made Man statue. The Man revels for a split second in his new face. Then, in a moment familiar to any product addict (“Repeat if desired.”), he smears his face with paint and redoes his mask as a blond. Another make-over takes off just as the trailer ends.
Nick Paparone. (Untitled) Display Model for (Self-Made Man Series) Commercial, 2010. Video still. Courtesy of the artist.
Like the best action movie trailers, the 42-second film combines gestures and sounds that allude to an entire narrative trajectory, while leaving the viewer to hanker for more. It provides a mutable interpretive framework for Paparone’s “floor models.” But one thing the trailer does not do is to clarify: we still have no idea what to expect from the series. The adornment of the mask on a man’s body with metamorphosing men’s faces follows the construction of a man’s persona. But the images from the sphere of ladies’ beauty treatments confuse this male formation and refuse us a comfortable conclusion.
The notion of timing is key to the interpretation of the action-figure quality of Paparone’s Self-Made sculptures and the rhythm of the trailer. But timing as temporality is also crucial. Paparone has deliberately discarded the artistic goal of the everlasting monument; instead, he seeks to create highly “dated” work. This artist will know he has successfully captured the moment when the style and language of a piece are recognizably and intimately connected to the moment of its creation. He aims for the “instant artifact.” The evolving series’ resultant “live broadcast” quality is a product of Paparone’s fascination with the phenomena of cable TV, movies, the L.A. dream, and American kitsch. His work takes over pop culture’s apparatuses in order to achieve its own evolution. The Self-Made series mobilizes the language of media and pop culture as systems, not objects. The resultant eruption and exposure of mass culture are utterly amoral and nonjudgmental.
Nick Paparone. (Untitled) Display Model for (Self-Made Man Series) Commercial, 2010. Video still. Courtesy of the artist.
At the same time, the Self-Made Man series elicits the viewer to project her own attitudes to American myth onto it. To me, the shot of the man blow-drying his new face looked like an industry victim holding a gun to his head. In the Self-Made Man statue, I saw a persona atop rubble; a friend saw a persona atop a pile of shiny shit; another saw a persona atop a twisted phallus. Each of us saw her own interpretation as essential to the narrative of the creation of the American man. Where will the Self-Made Man appear next? Paparone compares his process to a Mac operating system: it needs to be updated constantly in order to keep up with the moment. We’ll get as many Self-Made Men as OS Lions, Tigers, and Bears, “100—no, 200 pieces.” As media culture and American personhood evolve, the trailer will also adapt and reappear, constantly re-mythologizing the “autonomous floor idol.” So, stay tuned for Paparone’s solo show “Accents for the Self-Made Man” in Philadelphia, coming up in August, 2011 at Fleisher/Ollman Gallery. fleisher-ollmangallery.com. nickpaparone.com.
