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<![CDATA[My Site - Writing]]>Mon, 18 Mar 2024 21:29:13 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[Bulky Goods]]>Mon, 18 Mar 2024 17:00:27 GMThttp://www.augustushoffman.com/writing/bulky-goods
Bulky Goods: Paintings and Sculptures of Sarah D’Ambrosio and Morgan Hobbs By Augustus Hoffman

When I studied with the painter Graham Nickson, he had a term he used occasionally to describe a work of art. He would look at a painting, slowly, nod his head up and down, and then, after a pause, say, “This little painting here--it's really dense.” Then he moved on without further explanation, with a look on his face that said ‘surely my students know exactly what I mean’. Well, at first, I had no idea what he meant by calling attention to a painting’s density. Over time, I learned that describing something as dense was one of Nickson’s highest praises. A dense work of art, for Nickson, possesses the weightiness of the creative process; the fresh starts, dead ends, late nights, and brief moments of clarity that comprise the act of making. A dense piece might display physical attributes that are dense, such as the impasto mark making of a Rembrandt portrait or a Joan Mitchell landscape, but work that is truly dense extends beyond its physical attributes andinfiltrates a type of metaphysical realm. It is artwork that shows the viewer the struggle of creation, not as a schematic roadmap or aesthetic endpoint but rather as a messy archive, an unfathomable map of past, present and future marks all colliding and dancing with each other until they ultimately find synchronicity outside of their temporal framework, doing so in a way that is impossible for the creator to entirely plan.

I think of Sarah D’Ambrosio’s and Morgan Hobbs’ work as being bulky, much in the same way Graham Nickson would praise some work as being dense. At first glance, this comparison might feel like a stretch considering the different subject matter of both artists’ work; D’Ambrosio focuses primarily on paintings of saunas and bathhouses with the male nude (or almost nude) as her preferred subject matter, exploring the physicality and intimacy of the male body. Hobbs moves between painting, sculpture, and painted reliefs, developing an artistic language that is archeological in its nature, excavating a connection between invoked historical artifacts and our present selves. There are physical attributes to both of these artists’ work that warrant the use of bulky as an adjective in describing them which I will get into later. In my opinion, describing a work of art as bulky carries deeper qualities beyond physical attributes; there is something activating about things that are bulky. Their life force bubbles up from within and forces itself upon the outside world. Bulky things push up against, crowd out, bulge towards a very proper, perhaps trim understanding of how we organize the world. Things that bulk take up too much space, they carry in themselves, in their very existence, an affront towards an assumed hierarchy of how objects and categories are supposed to exist.

Sarah D’Ambrosio, Parachute Jump, oil on canvas, 48 x 34 inches.

D’Ambrosio’s figures, mostly male, are made from distorted bulky masses that present themselves as being distinctly separate from, but fundamentally tied to their natural environments. Their tense forearms, crouching legs, and forlorn faces all seem to have fought their way into existence; forms that are strong enough to distinguish themselves against richly colored pinks, yellows, pale greens, orange, and deepsea blues that comprise undefined color masses—past decisions which might have led to some recognizable forms that instead never came to fruition. D’ambrosio’s process is methodical, ruthless even, and as a result everything we witness is hard fought over; these figures hulk their way into existence, pulling themselves out of the primordial soup that is wet on wet painting. Few paintings depict this quite as well as Parachute Jump.

Sarah D’Ambrosio, Seaweed Boy at Coney Island, oil on canvas, 56 by 48 inches.

But to be clear, despite their direct, even muscular application, these paintings are not brutish. In Seaweed Boy at Coney Island, for example, we see this bulging muscular figure in a state of privacy and real intimacy. There is a sensitivity to his expression which suggests that D’ambrosio is not so much commanding her paintings to exist a certain way but rather is asking them where they want to go. The real strength in D’Ambrosio’s practice is her ability to be scrupulous, severe at times, with an appropriate amount of vulnerability too. Her paintings are in a constant state of discovery, both for us the viewer but also the artist as well and it’s clear how much delight she takes in this process. However, we also get a sense that D’Ambrosio will strike these men down if they become too unwieldy, too greedy in the space they take up. And so they exist in a type of temperamental, fragile paradise ever on the verge of becoming.

Sarah D’Ambrosio, Coney Island Angel, oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches.

There is another way in which these paintings feel bulky, too. The reader doesn't need to be reminded that the cemetery of art history is littered with countless gravesites of female nude paintings. Most of these women possess a body of a certain type, created almost entirely under the eager eye of their male creators. But here comes D’Ambrosio’s men, painted under female scrutiny, bulky in their presence, uncomfortably pushing against a male gaze that has become ubiquitous with the story of art.

Morgan Hobbs, Brick by Brick, oil and acrylic on papier mache and recycled materials, size variable.

Morgan Hobbs’ current work, made up of precariously placed papier-mache sculptures, vertigo inducing reliefs, and wobbly painted mosaic tiles, conjures an archeological site for remnants of a civilization that is both past and present, familiar and unknowable. There is a subtle disorientation we experience taking in relief pieces such as City Hall that place our relationship to it in a type of unspecific limbo, a permanent dolly zoom, that fosters a distinct feeling that our relationship to these objects will remain and perhaps grow indeterminable over time. Take Circumpoint (Study 2) as another example: what at first appears to be a black and white mosaic painting perhaps of some ancient ritual site soon morphs into a present day QR code. Hobbs’ work begs the question: Are we examining the remnants of an unfathomable past or are we actually staring down at our phones? The regenerative quality of Hobbs’ work is her ability to genuinely and deliciously answer “yes.”

Morgan Hobbs, City Hall, oil and papier mache on panel, 8 x 8 x 2 inches.

There is a bulky quality to Hobbs’ work—less noticeable at first than D’ambrosio’s—a subtle physical exaggeration that initially comes to us in a murmur but speaks up the longer we spend with her pieces becoming even louder and more distinguished when we try to conjure her work from memory. Looking back at photos of her sculpture Brick by Brick: Worth & Weight, I’m surprised to discover that this type of exaggeration isn’t as pronounced as I remember it. But it is there surely, both in physical form and perhaps more importantly, as a memory or ghost of my past understanding of it. Made from discarded Amazon boxes, covered in pulpy, papier-mache, we are presented with a stack of literal building blocks for some unnamed ancient civilization. Each block is porous, with a subtle shift in texture and color, slightly engorged as it butts up next to, leans against, or rests atop its neighbor. These pieces feel a bit unwieldy, even awkward, as they ascend towards the heavens. Their assembly is both playful and precarious; perhaps they reach towards some future utility or perhaps they are the aftermath of a previous collapse. Either way, the membrane that neatly separates our comprehension of past, present or future becomes permeable, even non-existent the longer we take in Hobbs’ work .

Morgan Hobbs, Circumpoint (study 2), oil on panel, 12 x 12 inches.

The bulkiness of Hobbs’ sculptures exists not just in its physicality but in its ability to lodge itself in our psyche, pushing up against the clean categories we use to demarcate, comprehend, and categorize time. Its presence, at first subtle, grows and nags at us the more we try to understand it. Similarly, the bulkiness of D’Ambrosio’s men, painted in a pronounced, overtly direct way, do not elicit feelings of repulsion, overcrowding, or intimidation—rather, the opposite occurs. Her forms feel vulnerable, intimate and at times ethereal. D’Ambrosio is capable of turning the painted nude into an expansive, ephemeral landscape. At times I forget the genre of the paintings I’m looking at. Rosy flesh tones are more likely to mimic the fleeting, slanting light on the side of a mountain as opposed to the network of dense human muscles they actually depict. And here I think is where the artworks of D’Ambrosio and Hobbs present themselves to us as a gift. What at first feels too bulky is actually pointing us towards our own thin assumptions about how and where to elicit meaning in art. Artifacts we initially cast to the ancient realm reveal themselves to carry the ubiquitous weight of our present day consumerism. Men who at first glance feel intimidating in their muscular demeanor expose a vulnerability and openness we are surprised to find in depictions of masculinity. In the end, these things that are called bulky take up exactly the right amount of space.

What more could we really ask for from a work of art?

Bulky Goods will be on view at the Front from March 9th through April 7th.

The writer would like to thank Hannah Richter and Ben Saxton for help in editing this piece.

]]><![CDATA["A Strange Luxury": The Sculptures of Jeremiah Ibarra at UNO Gallery]]>Wed, 21 Sep 2022 17:42:51 GMThttp://www.augustushoffman.com/writing/a-strange-luxury-the-sculptures-of-jeremiah-ibarra-at-uno-gallery

"The Grasshopper and the Ant and the Dove” by Jeremiah Ibarra

The Ticker and a Toddler Bite is an exhibition of sculptures by Jeremiah Ibarra, all made from different found objects on view currently at the UNO Gallery. The physical construction and grouping of these pieces is myriad. Objects are stacked, nailed, clamped, hung, drawn, painted, and sawed together. These pieces run the gambit in the ways in which they present themselves to us. They can be delightfully precarious ( as in the piece “Filbert and Solo Dog Fight”) to visually dense and ruthlessly organized ( as in “The Grasshopper And the Ant and the Dove”). From scratched vinyl lettering, to discarded styrofoam, to charmingly awkward ceramics, the objects that make up The Ticker and a Toddler Bite are often ordinary and discardable on an individual level and yet are distinctly singular in their organization. What at first feels like a haphazard chaotic assemblage often leads us to small careful details that belie a quieter structure and clarity. The real power and joy in experiencing this show is the way in which certain materials take on a chameleon-like character; moving from piece to piece, disguising or exposing their idiosyncratic nature depending on what each sculpture demands of it. The ease at which these materials transform in front of our very eyes would be unsettling if it wasn’t so exciting. Ibarra reuses many materials again and again often with surprising and delightful effect.

"The Ticker and a Toddler Bite"

“The Ticker and a Toddler Bite”

Take the piece “The Ticker and a Toddler Bite” which takes center stage in the first of two rooms and doubles as the exhibition’s title. Made primarily from reclaimed wood in a variety of different states, this piece is not nearly as visually dense or materially rich as other pieces in the exhibition. But its intrigue exists in a type of powerful limbo between different possible explanations or functions for the sculpture these materials create. Viewed from across the room, With its rocking legs and lip ledged table top, “The Ticker” brings to mind an aesthetically sparse, slightly demented baby’s crib, precariously assembled with anxiety inducing effect. The sculpture’s title would lead us towards this reading and a piece of white painted wood, crudely cut into a shape of a cloud, somehow denotes that we are in the land of childlike belief. And yet, seen from close up, this piece no longer feels like a crib as much as it does some strange table game. The crudely cut cloud now functions as a divider of a surface court, the way a net divides a ping pong table. On each side of the wooden cloud divider rests an intricate carved ball and some decorative circular wooden object. The white paint of the table top is scratched away at parts presumably from the rolling of this ball and object. It’s now that we notice, attached to one of the table’s leg, a meticulously taped pool cue like stick.

“The Ticker and a Toddler Bite” Detail

So how are we supposed to make sense of “The Ticker” ? Is it a crib or a table game? As soon as our mind begins reaching for some functional explanation of this sculpture, it runs into a different potential reality. Certain objects become charged with multiple functions and meanings. The white painted wood, crudely cut into a shape of clouds becomes a litmus test for different possible explanations.

“Alfredo’s China Cabinet #2”
That same wooden shaped cloud or a shape nearly identical to it shows up again in the exhibition’s most maximalist piece “Alfredo’s China Cabinet #2”. “Alfredo’s” is a densely packed cabinet of eccentric objects including but not limited to hand drawn canvas cereal boxes, a strainer, two giant sea shell like objects, and a white plastic bucket that is actually made from ceramic. Objects combat each other for our attention, and the clutter exists somewhere between excitement and stress. The cloud shaped piece of wood that psychologically charged “The Ticker” is nearly imperceptible in “Alfredo’s China Cabinet #2”. In “Alfredo’s”, it serves as a handle for a pullable drawer, and its role feels distinctly ornamental and functional. I completely overlooked it on my first two visits to the gallery. In this way, Ibarra is a master sculptor or assembler of his different pieces. He intrinsically understands that materials carry different weight and importance depending on their context and skillfully bends their presence to suit each piece’s overall character.

“Fighting Through a Fence”

The delight and meaning, if meaning is in fact something we can take away from the artist’s work, can be found not in the discovery of a singular purpose or specific understanding, but rather on the edge of such discovery. As the Ibarra notes in a deft artist statement:

“the constant fickle process of scavenging for materials and objects continue to keep me engaged because it requires discernment. on the outset i begin by valuing objects for their potential. often my opinion changes and i find that value is misplaced. although disconcerting, it is the work.”

For Ibarra, the straining and searching is the point. It is the place where creativity, playfulness, and possibility exist on equal footing.
The same can be said about our role as the viewer. I delight in the rhythm and cadences certain objects create amongst themselves and the ingenious recycling of specific materials (an entire article could be written about the use of graphite in this show). The delicate curving of a blue line drawing of a plant in “Fighting Through a Fence” seems to echo the strange curved body and appendages of a porcelain platypus that stands above it as well as the arching movement of a karate bow staff in an illustration to its left. Materials playfully call out and get responses from their neighbors.
Whether I arrive at specific, concrete conclusions about what these sculptures are telling me feels besides the point. As Ibirra admits in his statement, repurposing found objects is itself an excess of sorts. It’s a “strange luxury”. And a strange luxury is exactly the state this exhibition leaves us in. I find myself straining to make deeper connections, trying to arrive at an understanding that I might not otherwise attempt. And isn’t this the exact state of mind that good art demands of us?

The Ticker and a Toddler Bite is currently on view at the UNO Gallery ( 2429 St Claude Ave, New Orleans, LA 70117).

]]><![CDATA[Portent at the Front]]>Mon, 18 Apr 2022 19:35:21 GMThttp://www.augustushoffman.com/writing/portent-at-the-front What’s in a sign or a warning? What do we do with a symbol that points towards an approaching calamity? How will we make sense of our bodies in a world that is no longer hospitable to us?

These are some of the questions that come to mind when viewing the joint exhibition Portent by Ryn Wilson and Laura Velez. The exhibition, curated by Tom Walton, challenges us to imagine a future world built in the shadow of an unseen calamity and asks us to consider how our physical bodies relate to and survive in this altered landscape.

The figures in Velez’s paintings and Wilson’s photography are dressed in ways that both protect them from and make them deeply a part of these newly altered environments. Shrouded in different types of clothing and by extension different types of ritual, the figures in this show are allowed just enough space from our gaze to take on slightly mythical dimensions. Whether it is the soothsayer like status of Wilson’s cloaked women or the immaculate hazmatted figures in Velez’s paintings, we sense that the people in Portent are pointing us towards a future version of our own mythology. And even if these myths lead each artist’s work towards different places they overlap and echo each other in generative ways.

Ryn Wilson, Oneiromancy, archival pigment print, 24” x 36”

Wilson’s work feels mystical in nature and her shrouded figures tap into a type of occult that is stuck somewhere between a primal future and the present moment. In Oneiromancy, three women shrouded in gorgeous maroon garments stand in front of sparse desert rocks with arms extended to their side as the wind blows their clothing in a seemingly grandeur way. We’re reminded of ancient fortune tellers or protectors of some deities as these figures each hold up brilliant yellow orbs. What do these orbs represent? A symbol in some religious iconography? The scales of justice? Our thoughts, spiraling upwards as we begin to ascribe lofty meaning to every detail, get pulled back to a concrete reality when we realize these orbs are actually pristine tennis balls. It’s not so much that Wilson is commenting on the role of sports in our society. But rather, her use of these everyday objects beg us to ask: what mundane objects that we encounter today will become ascribed with a spiritual meaning in the future stories we tell about our survival? This question feels unsettling while at the same time provides a creative roadmap to help us navigate our way through the murkiness of things that have not let come to pass.

Laura Velez, Pink Light, oil on canvas, 11” x 14”

Less ephemeral than Wilson’s, Velez’s figures are grounded in the severe protocol of sanitation and disinfection. Their survival is contingent on a type of extreme hygiene and habit that shields them from the contamination of a toxic, threatening world. Despite the dangers of this menacing future, these figures, dressed in the intricate reflective folds of their hazmat suites and protective gear, are painted in dazzling detail and loving technique. They become as much a part of their landscape as they are separate from it. In Pink Light, for example, a fully hazmatted figure is kneeled down, arms extended out of frame. Is she reaching for something? Has she fallen? Has there been a contamination in her suit? Her posture feels unnerving and yet we can’t help but cherish the way her protective gear becomes a beautiful transition from the hot pinks on the left of the canvas to the cold dark violets on the right. The environment dances across her forms in a grand and nuanced way. For Velez, the apocalypse may be coming, but that doesn't mean it won’t be a visual feast, too.

Ryn Wilson, Sybil, archival pigment print, 16” x 24”

And here is where the work of Wilson and Velez meet in an interesting intersection: Both artists work in firmly held mediums, painting for Velez and photography for Wilson, and yet they each develop techniques that move them further away from their medium’s traditional aesthetic arenas and closer to each other.

Wilson’s work does not rely on the excessive props and special effects that some contemporary sci fi would lead us to believe is necessary in order to build a futuristic world. Her photos are all of real places and figures and fabrics assembled together to create a beautiful, oppressive, and barren world, a world that seems not hospitable to our present day excesses but livable enough to allow poets to walk the earth and lament what has been lost. In some way, Wilson is in kinship with old school, point and shoot documentary photography and yet, her images are assembled in a way to be bent, manipulated, and used to arrive at her own visual truth.

In Sybil, a circular mirror is placed on a barren ground and the blinding rays of a harsh sun reflect onto a darkly shrouded figure who catches the sun from both above and below. And yet the camera lens, struggling to balance the harsh contrast of the blinding sun and the dark figure, fails in its ability to convince us that these two things are part of the same space. The circular mirror feels more like it is floating above the grass than resting directly on it, and the sharp highlights spill off the mirror in a way that feels photoshopped. While other photos in this exhibition are collaged this one is not. And still, our eye does not trust this image to be simply a “straight” photograph. We keep looking for the seams that stitched this fib together and yet can find none. If Picasso believed that art was a lie that got us closer to the truth than Wilson’s work playfully offers the opposite hypothesis. Her photographed worlds feel assembled through sleight of hand tricks in much the same way a skilled painter would arrange her shapes.

Laura Velez, Looking North, oil on linen, 16” x 18”

In Velez’s work, her painting technique moves away from loose expressive brush marks towards a sharp methodical photorealism. Yet her real talent lies in knowing when not to over render certain passages of her work. In Looking North, Velez switches back and forth between bringing forms into sharp focus and allowing our gaze room to breathe. For example, the right hand of the standing figure, while anatomically correct in its rendering, is very restrained in its depiction and for good reason. Quiet passages like this become supporting actors for the real star of the piece; the reflective highlights on the red hazmat suit and the bright reflective highlights on the thigh high water. This dazzling light is crafted with the confidence and formality of a well focused camera lens. Velez wants us to focus on the strangeness and sharpness of those dancing highlights and to imagine the wetness of the water against the rubbery reflective glare of the hazmat suit. In this deeply haptic painting, we feel a future world as much as we see it.
The world building in both Velez’s and Wilson’s work are by no means the same. But rather, they compliment each other in ways that speak towards our present anxiety over the future. Take the presence of the sunlight in both Sybil and Looking North: In Sybil the beams aggressively break out of the mirror’s frame in an almost violent manner. The sun in Wilson’s photography is hostile, direct, and relentless. It speaks to a less hospitable world that humans will continue to find themselves at odds within. By contrast, the cool highlights that dance off the water’s surface feel optimistic, joyful even in Looking North. Perhaps it’s the fact that the figure is emerging out of a warm darkness towards the cool light or perhaps it is the determined and sensitive expression on the man’s face. But somehow this world, while plagued with dangers and hardships, still offers us some agency.
And aren’t these two different worlds exactly what a good portent depicts? A harbinger can both point towards a calamity while also showing us the resolve and courage that arise in the wake of one. The future may not look bright in Portent. But it is still richly expansive with the possibility for profound storytelling and meaning. And perhaps that is the most we as a species can hope for.

Portent is on View at The Front Gallery through May 8th. It is curated by Tom Walton with works by Ryn Wilson and Laura Velez.

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