Those Fabulous Fabricators and Their Finish Fetish

For his part, Carlson says that he harbors no illusions of laying claims to co-authorship. He sees his company as nothing more than an extension of an artist’s studio. “We do not consider ourselves co-authors of the work in any way, but we do want to be recognized as being the fabricator of the work.”

No worries there: Carlson & Co. has been getting plenty of recognition lately, mostly because of its collaboration with Koons, which began in the 1990s. At the time, Koons had been working on various forms of statuary, including his famous stainless-steel bunny, with a foundry in Pennsylvania. But when he tried to “point them up” — to increase their proportions significantly — the results were poor. So his London gallerist, Anthony d’Offay (who also represents Kelly), put him in touch with Carlson and together they set out to create the first Balloon Dog, Koons’ now-famous stainless-steel sculpture that looks like an exact replica of a giant Mylar balloon twisted into a puppy. (One version recently sold for $19 million; another will be on view in the new Broad Contemporary Museum at LACMA.)

Talk to either Suman or Carlson and they’ll go into great detail about how incredibly difficult Balloon Dog was, given that it stood over 10 feet tall and weighed more than a ton. “It was divided into 40 different sections, which had to be welded together without distortion or flaws,” explains Suman. What’s more, Koons demanded that it have a pristine, mirror finish. Suman: “To achieve an object that approaches optical perfection on that scale was unprecedented at the time.”

That’s also around the time Carlson & Co. introduced digital technologies to its practice; this eventually led it to various types of 3-D modeling programs, which support the kinds of CNC milling practices that are generally more common with architects. This has given its clients the ability to scan an object or maquette, and remodel it in a digital environment, which means infinite scalability, detail and flexibility. Charlie Ray did just that with Father Figure, the three-part sculpture he showed at Matthew Marks Gallery in New York last month. The solid-steel sculpture is an exact replica of the most common, mass-produced kids’ toy from the 1950s: the little green plastic man and his tractor. (Only now it weighs 18 tons.) “Computer software programs have undoubtedly revolutionized the business,” says Suman. “But I think we’re only at the beginning of what we can do. Things are going to get pretty interesting very soon.”

That’s not necessarily a good thing. Carlson says that he’s seen plenty of multimillion-dollar, overproduced artworks in recent years. So has Koons’ New York dealer, Jeffrey Deitch, who recently remarked, somewhat ironically, “There is a post-Koons cult of extreme production values in which the expense of the production overshadows the content.”

That may be because we’ve jumped headlong into an era of grand and spectacular artworks, which typically come with a bullish art market. Charlie Ray uses the term “wow factor” to describe his own desire to instill a sense of awe in viewers, and the same could be said of Koons, Olafur Eliasson, Takashi Murakami and other highly influential artists. Perhaps that’s why we’re seeing a kind of Bilbao effect among museums and biennials alike, where the more opulent and sensational the piece, the better. Koons’ proposed steam locomotive for LACMA, which will hang upside down from a 161-foot-high crane and which Carlson will produce, certainly fits into that category.

But this sort of art-world moral quandary is pretty remote to Carlson, who remains the optimistic technical enabler. “When I started, there was a feeling that virtually anything was possible,” he says. “Artists still feel that way today, but because of technology, the bar has been raised higher than ever before. So what was done 20 years ago is now unacceptable. It’s like running the four-minute mile. What was impossible is now expected. There’s no telling where this will lead.”