Airplanes is a piece executed over many years. Around 2006, I took a photograph of this Russian airplane out in the desert near the Grand Canyon. I thought it was very odd to have this Russian airplane out so far by the monument, somewhere between Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon. It was very strange. I took a photograph from my moving car with a low-fi, disposable camera. While I was out on that same trip, I found a copy machine and made lots and lots of xerox copies of that plane. I cut 50 or 60 airplanes out and made collages on painted panels. I made a green one, a blue one, and a red one. Two were destroyed, but this one survived. I wanted the planes to look like locusts nosediving, these Russian planes in a repeated swarm. It is an exercise in working with a solitary image, the constraint of having one image repeated lots of times. It is a practice in simplicity. I wanted to make a piece that was as serious as it was funny. Years later, it would become almost a performance piece. I broke the panel in half and burned the second half. What remains is Airplanes. - MATT MAUST