Robert Otto Epstein - "This is Heavy" exhibition catalog by High Noon Gallery

ROBERT OTTO E P S T E I N THIS IS HEAVY

ROBERT OTTO EPSTEIN This is Heavy

Robert Otto Epstein, “This is Heavy” by Rahel Aima I’ve recently taken up ceramics. Specifically wheel throwing, which has exploded the ways in which I consider form and materiality. I’m picking up every mug, bowl and plate I see to consider their shape and heft, and think about how certain curves or decorative elements might have been made. I’m turning them over to look at the unglazed ‘foot’ on the bottom. (Shopkeepers love me.) And ever since I learnt how to trim off excess clay to lighten a piece, I’m thinking about the weight of these objects for the first time too. I remember my instructor saying, in an early class that it’s just clay, dirt and water, and perhaps he didn’t add that it’s all around us, that we’re creating objects from the fabric of the earth in some sort of transposed Adam’s rib situation, but that’s what I took away anyway. Robert Otto Epstein’s skeuomorphic sculptures have the same effect. We usually talk about this design concept in terms of UX, or user experience design—a word processing document that imitates a piece of paper, or calendar and calculator apps, but examples abound in ceramics too. Early pottery used to be textured to resemble woven baskets, for example, or made with handles that imitate rope or cord. Epstein’s works similarly take their cues from various vases and vessels but are made of concrete. Were you to try lift them you might find yourself parroting the show title, or Marty McFly from Back to the Future, exclaiming this is heavy. But then again, if you live in a city you’re probably surrounded by a lot more concrete than dirt; perhaps it’s not that different to clay. Given the material, one surprise might be their relatively modest size. It is a material that connotes up a certain severity, all hard lines and monumental scale. Concrete sculptures, by extension, conjure up the gargantuan and often crypto-futuristic monuments still standing in a number of post-Soviet nations. It’s a study in contradictions: the sculptures are remarkably heavy despite their size, and rather less fragile than the vessels they imitate. And I’m surprised to learn that while I directly associate concrete with post-WWII architecture, its origins stretch as far back as ancient Rome, with the Colosseum being one of the most famous examples. The most overt references to the ancient world, however, come in the shapes of the sculptures themselves many of which boast long necks, defined lips and multiple bulbous chambers. Yet these are concrete vessels as architectural facades or fairground standees, containers which

cannot hold anything. And while I can tentatively identify an amphora and perhaps a more modern gourd vase, the forms equally open themselves up to multiple interpretations. In particular, 3W8ui%vC9iPz (all works 2018) resembles a dumbbell, while P9#q3Dz6&r!m$ suggests nothing so much as a drone. Apart from the drawing which is untitled, all the sculpture titles feature similar, seemingly random strings of characters. Encrypted communication or auto-generated passwords perhaps? But the presence of broadly forbidden characters like !, $, #, and ( suggests a desire to render the titles, and with them any semantic meaning, inoperable. Perhaps it is worth considering the sculptures as multisemic, an attempt at semantic frequency jamming. Their cardboard cutout-like lack of depth—uniformly just three inches—places them squarely in the realm of icon design. They are displayed on white pedestals that are largely perpendicular to the wall which, coupled with the sparse scenography further solidifies this feel. (The sole exception is e%75fH8190z, a rectangular slab resting on the floor, with the undulating, black-and white patterning of a fingerprint-muddied window—another nod to evading identification?) The sculptures cast soft, diffuse shadows onto the blank white walls behind them to create a drop shadow effect of contemporary web design standards like CSS 3 or HTML 5. But instead of clean lines and solid colors, the surfaces of these sculptures display a number of rasterized patterns that complicate the icon effect. The shallowness of the sculptures recalls Epstein’s kitschy figurative paintings. These tend towards an aggressively flat style, featuring stylized, homogenized characters who have all been to the same plastic surgeon for a new, seemingly hairy nose. Later series in this vein retain the exuberant embrace of colors to play with clashing patterns and hand-drawn grids inspired by vintage 1980s knitting patterns. Despite their apparent artlessness, they have a kind of fauvist jazz-squiggle bus seat upholstery kind of feel. The works in This Is Heavy are rather more calibrated but a number of them still feature a comparably bold, rainbow-brite palette. And the wonkiness of the grids is extended to the not-quite symmetrical (but close) shapes of the sculptures and sketchy, imprecise coloring-in—or should they be considered shaped canvases?—to charming effect. More direct resonances can be found in the 8-Bitterized paintings and drawings, but the patterning here feels less like a low-res render artifact and more like mosaic work, at a scale that makes their acrylic surfaces rewardingly morph depending on where you are standing. A lone, rather lovely graphite drawing—a dense trapezoid of clashing moiré patterns—further nods to Epstein’s much older series of zigzag drawings. But the color has been stripped away in favor of the small, geometric symbols of graphic crochet notation.

There are so many strategies of obfuscation at work here. Some, like the work titles or the mysterious asemic glyphs that decorate a collection of vessels in the front of the gallery, are more robust than others. Five sculptures are crowded on a table in an unexpectedly literal concrete jungle, two of which are inked in neon colors that create an attractive, staticky nacre. Others, like the assertion that Epstein only knows five photoshop techniques very clearly don’t hold water. The exhibition text notes Epstein’s sustained interest in deconstructionist philosophy and I think of Jacques Derrida too, writing about deception: “To pretend, I actually do the thing: I have therefore only pretended to pretend.” But then I think of that line from William Gibson’s The Peripheral: “Be quiet darling, and let pattern recognition have its way.”

Rahel Aima is a freelance writer and editor based in Brooklyn. Her writing has appeared in or at 4 Columns, Art Asia Pacific, Artforum, Art in America, Artnet, ArtReview, ArtReview Asia, Atlantic, Bandcamp, Bidoun, Bookforum, Brownbook, Canvas, Creators Project, Document Journal, e-flux architecture, Elephant, Foam, Frame, Frieze, Harper’s Bazaar, Art Arabia, Ibraaz, LEAP, Mark, Momus, Mousse, New Inquiry, New Republic, Red Hook Journal, Real Life, Tank, Vogue Arabia, and World Policy Journal, among others. Aima grew up in Dubai and graduated from Columbia University in 2010 with a degree in Anthropology; she has previously lived in Kochi, Lisbon, and Venice. She’s currently special projects editor at New Inquiry, a correspondent at Art Review Asia, a contributing editor at Momus and was formerly the founding EIC of THE STATE. She is a recipient of a 2018 Creative Capital Arts Writers Grant in the shortforum category, and has been profiled in Elle India and New York Magazine.

5gU8*a@Xm>7^, 2018, acrylic on cement, 24 x 16 x 3 inches

G7^w&*kO1H3, 2018, acrylic on cement, 30 x 15 x 3 inches

^y7A@fzWg47, 2018, acrylic on cement, 26 x 17 x 3 inches

P9#q3Dz6&r!m$, 2018, acrylic on cement, 25 x 23 x 3 inches

3W8ui%vC9iPz, 2018, acrylic on cement, 26 x 20 x 3 inches

t%5r3A6*j!e$, 2018, acrylic on cement, 29.5 x 16 x 3 inches

T5a!t^ox9, 2018, acrylic on cement, 28 x 18 x 3 inches

e%75fH8I90z, 2018, acrylic on cement, 20 x 16 x 3 inches

wi(8,*e#60+vaQ, 2018, acrylic on cement, 20 x 16 x 3 inches following pages: Untitled, 2018, graphite on paper, 22 x 18 inches

Untitled, 2018, graphite on paper, 30 x 22 inches

Untitled, (detail) following pages: Untitled (8-Bitterized Series), acrylic on panel, 30 x 30 inches Untitled (8-Bitterized Series), acrylic on panel, 30 x 30 inches

Robert Otto Epstein b. Pittsburgh, PA

EDUCATION University of Durham, Durham, England, Law, 2000-1 University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, B.A. Political Science, 1998 SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2019 This is Heavy, High Noon Gallery, New York, NY, January 3 - February 3 2018 Wear it Love it Flaunt it Own it, Galerie Sebastien Adrien, Paris, France, July 1 – August 30 2017 New Work, Hionas Gallery, New York, NY, May 8 - 30 Solo booth at Volta NY, Bool-e-an, New York, NY, March 1-5 2016 Ron from Ronkonkoma, Simuvac Projects, New York, NY, September 10 – October 16 Sally Jessy Raphael, Hionas Gallery, New York, NY, July 7 – August 5 2015 8Bit Calculator, Ada Gallery, Richmond, VA December 18 – January 31 Portraits, Gallery 440, Brooklyn, NY, February 7 – March 21 2014 Sleeveless Cardigan, 99 Cent Plus, Brooklyn, NY, September 5 -19 ROW By ROE, Matteawan Gallery, Beacon, NY, July 12 – August 5 SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2019 20 x 16, Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, February 28 – March 20

2018 Magic, Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, CA, July 14 – August 18 Everybody in the Pool, Ada Gallery, Richmond, VA, May 15 – June 30 More or Less, Hemphill Fine Arts, Washington, D.C., April 19 – June 19 2017 Thread Lines, The Drawing Center exhibition at The Kentucky Museum, April 29 – August 5 The Painted Desert Part 1, High Noon Gallery, NYC, October 5 – November 28 Colormania, (3 person show), Brooklyn, NY, September 8 – October 15 2016 CASHEESH, Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrinton, MA, December 2 – 11 If Color Could Kill, Salena Gallery, Vassar College, NY, August 22 – September 15 Squared, Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA, May 7 – 28 Pass / Fail, Ortega y Gasset Projects, Brooklyn, NY, April 15 – May 15 Lineup, SFF Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, April 29 – June 15 If Color Could Kill, Salena Gallery, LIU Brooklyn Campus, Brooklyn, NY, April 5 – 29 Warmth of Winter, National Arts Club, NYC, December 19 – January 2 2015 Post-Analog Painting, The Hole, NYC, April 22 – May 24 20 x 16, Curated by Geoffrey Young, Morgan Lehman Gallery, NYC, March 26 – May 2 Sacred Shapes, Curated by Allison Barker and Jessica Speiser, A+E Studios, NYC, May 26 – June 21 The Musical Box, Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson, New York, January 24 – March 8 Working Knowledge, Lorimoto Gallery (Curated by ROE), Ridgewood, January 10 – February 8 Tile Masters, Long Island University Selena Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, January 15 – February 28 Art Palm Beach, Litvak Gallery, January 21-25 2014 Thread Lines, The Drawing Center, New York, NY, September 18 – December 14 Salon at Harbor Gallery, Harbor Gallery, New York, NY, October 11 – November 19 ROW By ROE (Solo), Matteawan Gallery, Beacon, NY, July 12 – August 5 I Listen to Color, Frank Juarez Gallery, Sheboygan, WI, June 21 – July 26 Never Mind The Bullocks, Life On Mars, Brooklyn, NY, June 29 – August 3 Ab Fab 2, Mulherin + Pollard, New York, NY, May 29 – June 29 Top Drawer, Imogen Holloway Gallery, Saugerties NY, May 2 – June 1 2013 Maneuvers, Voorkamer, Lier, Belgium, October 13 – November 17 Color Line, Outpost Artist Resources, Brooklyn, NY, September 28 – October 25 Nurture Art Benefit Exhibition, Bernarducci Meisel Gallery, New York, October 28 The Song Sings Itself, Kenise Barnes Fine Art, Larchmont, NY, August 1 – September 21

Flat Frontal, Schema Projects, Brooklyn, NY, July 19 – September 15 That Being Said, Jack Hanley Gallery, New York, July 18 – August 16 Unhinged, Pierogi Gallery, New York, July 5 - 28 Robert Otto Epstein, Imogen Holloway, Saugerties, NY, July 5 – August 11 A Series of Alternating Uniform Spaces and Parts, Airplane Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, April 20 – May 18 Inside Voices, Parallel Art Space, Ridgewood, NY, February 23 – April 7 Grid/Graph, Mulherin + Pollard, New York NY, February 28 - March 31 In Between Lines, Laundry Lung Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, May 19 – June 6 2012 Uprise Art at Chelsea Market, Chelsea Market Concourse, New York, NY, December – January 2013 Nurture Art Benefit Exhibition, Charles Bank Gallery, New York, NY, November Pattern and Embellishment, Drive-By Projects, Watertown, MA, October 18 – November 24 Sleeveless Cardigan (Solo Exhibition), Mt. Comfort Gallery, Indianapolis, Indiana, September 7 – 28 The Machinery of Desire (Solo Exhibition), Retramp Gallery, Berlin, Germany, September 6 – October 11 Affordable Art Fair, Spring 2012, Uprise Art Booth, New York, NY, April 18 – 22 2011 When Will We Grow Up, Finch & Ada, New York, NY, December 2 – 16 Autumn Exhibition, Finch & Ada, New York, NY, September 12 – October 14 Private Eyes Salon, Finch & Ada, New York, NY, November 10 Leisureland, Maloney Fine Arts, Los Angeles, CA, July 16 – August 20 2010 Postcards From The Edge, Visual Aids Gallery, New York, NY 2009 By All Accounts They Look Away, Envoy Enterprises, New York NY Unknown Linguist, Kaffe 1668, New York, NY Nurture Art Benefit Exhibition, Brooklyn, NY PUBLIC INSTALLATIONS New York City Parks Department Mural - Spring, 2019 Facebook New York Headquarters Wall Painting – Fall, 2015 CURATORIAL PROJECTS 2017 – 2015 Archetypewriters, Schema Projects, NY, January 27 – February 26 SALAMI SALON, ROE Projects pop up space, BK, NYC, January 14

The River, Hionas Gallery, NY, December 9 – January 8 BOSCO, ROE PROJECTS pop up space, NY, November 4 - 20 Rational Curves, Matteawan Gallery, Beacon, NY March 12 – April 3 Elemental, Lorimoto Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, February 20 – March 20 Working Knowledge, Lorimoto, Brooklyn, NY, January 8 – Feb 8 PRESS Painters’ Table, Seen in New York, January, 2019, by Paul Corio, January, 2019 Arte Fuse, Robert Otto Epstein: This is Heavy at High Noon Gallery by Kate Menard, January, 2019 The New Criterion, The Critic’s Notebook, by James Panero, January, 2019 Art and Cake LA, Magic at Roberts Projects, August, 2018 VICE, Creators Project, May 2017 ELLE Magazine, A Guide to Figuring out What Kind of Art Turns You On, April, 2016 The Chronogram, Cover Image and Interview, September, 2016 Hyperallergic, Paintings that Blur and Pigment, May, 2015 The New York Times, Art in Review by Karen Rosenberg, Oct 16, 2014 The New Criterion, The Critic’s Notebook, January 2014 The L Magazine, “This Week’s Must-See Art Events” by Whitney Kimball, Feb 18, 2013 Juxtapoz Magazine, Knitting Drawings, February 2013 Departures Magazine, featured artist: “The Art of Discovery,” November/December 2012 Nuvo News Review: Robert Otto Epstein at Mt. Comfort by Charles Fox, September 12, 2012 The Art Cake, featured artist and interview, August 4, 2012 Brown Paper Bag, curated by Sara E. Barnes, July 11, 2012 CORPORATE COLLECTIONS Facebook The Big Human Fidelity Investments Oscar Health

Robert Otto Epstein | This is Heavy January 3 - February 3, 2019 Edition of 100

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cover: P9#q3Dz6&r!m$, 2018, acrylic on cement, 25 x 23 x 3 inches