Dimensions: Painting: 2755 x 1754 mm
Copyright: © Lucy McKenzie | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Editor: This is "Side Entrance" by Lucy McKenzie, currently held at the Tate. It depicts an architectural interior. The rendering is so precise. What do you see in this piece? Curator: This meticulously rendered painting brings to mind questions of production and labor. Notice the flattening of space, almost like a technical drawing. This emphasizes the act of construction itself. What kind of labor do you think is being represented here? Editor: I guess architectural design and maybe even the physical building work? Curator: Precisely. McKenzie blurs the lines between fine art and the often-overlooked skill of architectural craftsmanship. The materials themselves—paint, canvas—become tools in questioning the value we assign to different types of making. It certainly makes you think. Editor: I agree. I never really thought of painting this way before.
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http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/mckenzie-side-entrance-t13591
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Side Entrance depicts a nearly life-size cross section of an interior. McKenzie has added flat washes of oil paint to the thin black lines that delineate the architectural features of the room. Numbers in pencil give measurements of the areas they identify. The work is one of a series of six paintings, based on designs by the Belgian architect Paul Jaspar. McKenzie often reinterprets late 19th-century interior designs taken from architectural archives. She is interested in the relationship between fine and applied arts, proposing that an artist should be ‘something closer to the classical artisan’. Gallery label, December 2020
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