Mariah Robertson’s Chemical Reactions | ART21 "New York Close Up"

[Bushwick, Brooklyn]

Photographic things are about controlling
really tiny amounts of light.

[New York Close Up]

A few years ago,

a friend was doing me a favor looking for
something in the darkroom,

and I asked her to open some boxes

and one of the boxes was a roll of unexposed
paper.

And she says,

"Oh there's nothing in here but this peach-colored
mural print."

[Mariah Robertson, Artist]

And I'm like, "It’s not a print! No!"

Suddenly all the keys on the piano being
like, "No!"

["Mariah Robertson's Chemical Reactions"]

[4 Years Ago]

I started fiddling around with that paper
that was "blown".

Either this paper was gonna go in the trash

or I was going to play with it.

At the end of each workday

I would just sort of douse it with leftover
chemicals.

There's always a bit of that, like, chemical
mess at the edge of prints

when you're working in a darkroom.

It's just normally considered a flaw

or something that you crop off.

I always enjoy trying to make something out
of the unwanted thing

and go deeper into the disaster.

[MATTHEW DIPPLE] You..are you speaking...are
you speaking to me through a mask?

[ROBERTSON] I am!

[DIPPLE] Okay.

Yeah, I just called her.

She said she can’t pick up the phone,

[48 Hours Before the Opening]

but she's gonna be done at 3:30.

Things are a little bit delayed today.

It's maybe slower that it would have otherwise
been.

[Matthew Dipple, Gallerist]

[ROBERTSON] When you're young, there's nothing
to stop you

from always working up to the last minute.

The mental locomotive is really pumping.

Scattered ideas that were all over,

they're suddenly, like, crystallized and form
new things.

The language for describing these

either comes from photography or from painting.

But there are no optics involved in making
them.

There's no brushing on top of things.

They're just a series of chemical reactions
on this one flat piece of paper.

Paper was wet and then I sprayed it

so all these little droplets, like, hit that
spray

and then just slid down.

Developer is like black

and fixer is like white,

and when it's just one of them you can...

you know what’s going to happen.

But then as they mix with water in varying
strengths of each one,

then things happen.

I can coax them to happen,

but they won't happen on my command.

Slowly there started to be some, like, purple
magenta.

There started to be green when the developer
was cold

or when the fixer and developer would mix

there would be some yellow and orange.

Sometimes there are areas where I don't know
what's happening,

and it makes this lavender-hippie-rainbow-unicorns
color.

It's a fleeting mystery.

I go in there with a plan,

but the good ones are ones where they sort
of exceed the plan.

I don't even know, like, what's happening
on 75% of it,

and then it's done, and I wash it and I'm
like, "That's amazing!"

"Who did that!?" [LAUGHS]

[DIPPLE] It's about creating some sort of

educated or controlled chaos

and then seeing what can come from that

and whether it's beautiful or successful or
unsuccessful.

And I think she’s very conscious it--

it's not always going to be successful.

[ROBERTSON] No!

It's fine.

No, it's so...

Please don’t touch it!

It's so...don’t...

No, no, it’s fine.

I don’t know how to explain what to do!

[American Contemporary]

[The Bowery, Manhattan]

[LISA] Anything else?

[ROBERTSON] I've got some wood that's all
taped up together.

It's so different....

[WOMAN] Matthew Dipple.

[DIPPLE] Hi, very nice to meet you.

She frames them using the frame as a kind
of a sculptural element.

[ROBERTSON] I really wanted to work with metallic
paper.

But, by the time I got around to

being able to do anything serious with it,

they stopped selling it in sheets,

and it only came on rolls.

And I didn't have a way to cut the paper down

to, like, 16 by 20,

in the dark.

And they were coming out all...

all wacky.

And it took me way too long to realize,

"Oh, I could make this any size I want."

All of the edges became really special.

It seems like in your work

you can express some part of your personality

that you’re maybe not consciously aware
of all the time.

Like maybe your better self.

I have heard similar things like,

"They feel free and joyful and positive and
optimistic."

And I'm like, "Oh really?"

"'Cause I'm so anxious and like…" [LAUGHS]

"I mean, like, living,"

I’m like, "Whaaaa!,"

like, "That's good that that comes out like
that."

I had been thinking I could do a long one,

and then finally it clicked.

I'm like, “Oh just take the whole box,"

"Like, as it is, don’t cut it.”

Like, it’s already been cut at the factory.

It’s already one real long rectangle.

It’s a bit of a technical challenge

to try and process it by hand.

Exposing it is pretty mellow.

But then once the chemistry comes out

you're just stuck doing it.

You've got to go until you process the whole
thing.

The long ones that have images,

they start at, like, 15 hours.

The next day is usually devoted to, like,
sleeping and crying.

Like... [LAUGHS]

And then, I just didn't quite know how to install it.

It's just so big.

What do you do with it now?

Matthew from the gallery called and said,

"Mariah, would you be willing to sell one
of them long pieces to an institution?"

And I'm like,

"What does that mean?"

"Yes. Fine...get the...you know,"

"like, fine, sure, sure.” [LAUGHS]

[Midtown, Manhattan]

He didn't say who it was.

If he had, I would have said, "Give them for
free." [LAUGHS]

"Give them three of them. Please."

I remember, as a kid, I'd get one-hour photos
done

and I would throw the negatives away because
they were meaningless to me,

and my grandmother would keep those.

I had no idea.

I'm like, "What are these little like orange
things? Yuck!"

"I want this 4 by 6 picture."

And it feels so powerful when you have a photograph
in your hand,

like, this will last forever.

I have this piece of time in my hand.

I have control over it.

There's a lot of information you can have
on that paper,

but it's also very delicate.

Like, its ability to record is also its vulnerability
to damage.

When those long pieces are done and when they're
beautiful,

there are so many tiny chemical reactions--

chance things that are coming together that
can never be replicated.

And it's all on one big vulnerable thing,

and then it's just installed, out for the
air,

in the least safe way possible,

over those, like, trapeze bars.

[Roxana Marcoci, Senior Curator]

Roxana Marcoci said something really good,
looking at it.

She said, "We try to control everything but
we can't."

It reminded me that that's what this is about.

All your attempts are going to fail at controlling
life,

so you should let that go so you can actually
see what's happening.