Roy McMakin

The Broken Juice Glass is a limited edition set of four different glasses conceived by Roy McMakin, exclusively for Artware Editions. For this edition, the artist has taken the simplicity of four small glasses and imposed on them a complex reworking of the aphorisms “THINGS CHANGE” and “CHANGE THINGS”. Because of their transparency and shape, McMakin is able to use the seriality of the glasses to play out a conceptual progression: the first glass is clear, on the second the phrasing is shown in its entirety on the front of the glass, and on the third and fourth the text is printed in a band around the glass but appears to be illegible. One must perfectly line up the fragmented text (a greater challenge from the third to the fourth) from the front through to the back of these to make sense of the parts. When the glasses are full, the front text appears incoherent but as the glass empties things change and all is clear.

McMakin’s art practice explores how functionality influences meaning within the medias of sculpture, photography, design, and architecture. He has had recent solo exhibitions at such prestigious venues as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; and Matthew Marks Gallery, New York. He lives and works in Seattle.