Published by Mississippi Valley Textile Museum, 2025. English texts by Michael Rikley-Lancaster, Marina Roy and Robert Tombs; 96 pages, 27.9 × 21 cm (11 × 7.7 inches), Smyth-sewn softcover with detached spine binding, offset. Design by Robert Tombs. 

“The concept of work ethic looms over Factory. The artworks are presented as 18 distinct bodies of work under the rubric “The Morality of Paint vols. I–XVIII” — comprised of newly conceived artworks as well as photographic and video documentation of retrospective works. The eighteen works, placed intentionally like ‘stations’, one piece leading to the next, could evoke a series of separate work stations in a factory (a series of actions conducted at each position occupied by the work); alternately, these ‘stations’ could evoke a series of vignettes telling an overarching story (as might be found in a church). Through juxtaposing eighteen installation works in a sequence, an allegorical constellation begins to reveal itself, highlighting paint’s central role in becoming human — from Paleolithic to contemporary/posthuman. The artist positions himself as a kind of worker-designer-artist-historian, creating artworks grounded in the act of painting as an epiphylogenetic destiny.”

> Marina Roy, in “Factory: Painting in the Wake of Industrialized Being,” Robert Tombs: The Morality of Paint, Vols. I – XVIII, 2025