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Exhibition catalog for a sculputure show at the JayJay Gallery.

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Robert Ortbal

untold wrinkles

JayJay Gallery

November 7 - December 22, 2007

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California sculptor Robert Ortbal lives and works in the Bay Area, a region known for its

innovative bioscience and technology industries. While the atmosphere here is often thick

with the will to control destiny, led by computer programmers, researchers, and scientists,

Ortbal in contrast seeks not to alter nature but as an artist address the tensions between

natural and artificial as well as rational and mystical. In probing these poles his focus has

turned to the majesty of growth, generation, and renewal as it is shaped by concrete

opposing forces apart from the import of metaphysical and ethical inquiry. In a time when

we know more than ever about the make-up of ourselves and fellow creatures, he queries

the limits of confidence. His premise: alter one aspect of nature’s cycle and it does not

cease, but what is typical about it certainly may.

Ortbal’s ponderings come to fruition in the studio, and there is plenty of play to his method.

Normal is not his vision. Nor is normal beauty what he seeks to create. With exuberant

imagination, he combines into new forms everyday materials, nearly all manmade, ranging

from chicken wire to resin, paint, plastic golf balls, and flocking. The resulting sculptures

tend to spring from the wall in energetic bursts, sprouting strange, fantastical growths:

tendrils stretch forth, elongated soft tubes curl inward, sporangia pimple the surface. This

abundant vitality Ortbal thus arrests so that his sculptures suggest specimens frozen for

taxonomic study. Despite their evocation of life from the marine to forest floor, however,

these exotics are entirely of the artist’s making.

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Previous Page: left side - Parallel Questions: Hollow and Fuzzy

Right side - into and out of

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into and out of

2007, 85 x 58 x 28, mirrored mylar, foam, aqua resin, flock and paint

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into and out of

2007, 85 x 58 x 28, mirrored mylar, foam, aqua resin, flock and paint

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Ortbal intentionally imbues his works with a pronounced ornamental quality. The use of

decorative devices in art tends to assure viewers that art’s purpose is to please the eye and

delight the mind. Nature, likewise, offers its own baroque style in the design of species,

but never as mere decorative dalliance, always as valuable adaptation to environment.

Ortbal’s sculptures certainly declare their own sensual, tactile pull, the allure offset only by

the irregularity of his vision. In these works, we may contemplate not only the mystery of

growth’s trigger, but how ornament both complements and disguises form. The aim is not

to create fantasy eye-candy to amuse, puzzle, or repulse viewers, but instead issue the

challenge to pause and examine more closely the unexpected.

Between what the human eye finds pleasing or off-putting is a razor thin line Ortbal

exploits to subtle effect. A mere change of the light by which a work such as Hydra (2007)

is seen reveals new detail. Under diffuse conditions the great, green limbs of Hydra’s

“body” appear to have a surface as plain and matte as felt. Switch to spotlighting and this

same surface sparkles, its glinting flock-coating assuming the velvety cast of furry mosses

and lichens. The sprinkling of hand-colored Styrofoam balls in the work Topographical

Source (2005) furthers the metaphor. Their clustering, carefully arranged by the artist,

suggest the generative part of the life cycle—capsules poised to release spores into the air.

Likewise, the evocation of lichens, organisms of astonishing variety, often rococo in their

extravagance of form, color, and texture, attests to the power of permutation that inspires

Ortbal, thus the title Untold Wrinkles, a reference to countless adaptations yet to be

conceived.

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Topographical Source

2005, 43 x 45 x 15, chicken wire, foam and paint

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Ortbal’s vein of exploration continues to morph. In particular, Ortbal’s Architecture of a

Scent: Cattails (2007), composed from cut foam and dissected fake flower parts, offers

wry humor. Ersatz cattails plucked from their plastic stems and secured to new pink tails

make explicit the visual conundrum in Ortbal’s use of materials. The argument is in fact

circular: mimic nature for decorative purposes with unnatural materials and achieve the

ultimate artifice that appears to be an organism. His playful use of materials subverts

representation in favor of suggestion and in the process swipes at our modern complacency

with plastic nature. Similarly, the artist addresses the stark white gallery wall. In the piece

into and out of (2007), composed from mirrored Mylar and cut foam, he transforms the

virgin surface into host for this quixotic creation. The effect is again decorative, but clearly

altering, offering wit and reflection quite literally.

Ultimately what is gained for the viewer that accepts the invitation to examine Ortbal’s

work is not the opportunity to feel diminished by all that we do not know or control but

quite the opposite, the chance to feel, no matter how altered the form or space, intimate and

engaged with physical phenomena.

Diana L. Daniels

Diana L Daniels is the assistant curator at the Crocker Art Museum.

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Hydra

2007, 33 x 52 x 25, chicken wire, aqua resin, foam, flocking, wire, paint, tool dip

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Parallel Questions: Hollow and Fuzzy

2007, 46 x 40 x 16, wax, wire, cut vinyl, fabric balls and plastic balls

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Architecture of a Scent: Cattails

2007, 29 x 23 x 6, cut foam and dissected fake flower parts

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Medusa

2007, 33 x 25 x 14, chicken wire, foam, aqua resin, paint and flock

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Imperial

2007, 60 x 57 x 9, chicken wire, aqua resin, paint and aluminum foil

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pore, 2007, 9 x 10 x 1.5, aqua resin, foam and paint -Anonymous, 2007, 27 x 18 x

2.5, cut foam, mirrored mylar - opposite: Prune, 2007, chicken wire, aqua resin, paint22

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The Tendencies of Burnt Sugar

2005, 51 x 68 x 27, chicken wire, foam, wood and paint

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Selected Solo Exhibitions:

2006 Oxygen’s Shadow, Cabrillo Gallery, Cabrillo College, Soquel, CA

2004 New Kingdom, The Oakland Museum of California at City Center, Oakland, CA

2001 seeing is believing, Pond, San Francisco, CA

1998 Behind One's Eyes, 1078 Gallery, Chico, CA

1996 Lullaby, Four Walls, San Francisco, CA

1996 Between Red and Green, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, CA

1995 as above, so below, Richmond Art Center, Richmond, CA

Selected Installations:

2005 Eureka Fellowship Exhibition, University of California, Berkeley Art Museum

2004 above and beneath, Oakland Art Gallery, Oakland, CA

2000 Openings, 9-1-1 Media Arts Center, Seattle, WA

1999 What is Art for?, The Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA

1998 Fertile Waste, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, CO

Selected Group Exhibitions:

2007 Wall Works III, Traywick Contemporary, Berkeley, CA

2007 Watershed, Snyderman-Works Gallery, Philadelphia, PA

2005 M Theory, Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco, CA

2005 Ornament: The Art of Desire, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art

2003 Needle Art: A postmodern sewing circle, A traveling exhibition

2002 Being There: 45 Oakland Artists, The Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA

1998 20th Anniversary Exhibition, SFMOMA Artists Gallery, San Francisco, CA

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Robert Ortbal - untold wrinkles

November 7 - December 22, 2007

JayJay Gallery5520 Elvas Avenue

Sacramento, CA 95819

Phone: 916-453-2999

Email: [email protected]

www.jayjayart.com

Catalog: Copyright2007 JayJay Gallery and Diana Daniels

Art: Copyright2007 Robert Ortbal

All rights reserved. No part of this catalog may be reproduced without written permission

from the gallery and the artist.

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