ROBERT ORTBAL MUSICAL CHAIRS
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r o b e rt ortbal
Musical Chairs
JayJay Gallery Beatnik Studios
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Number 75 ° 2013 graphite, colored pencil and ink on paper 8.75” x 11.5”
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A light but relentless touch: Sculptures by Robert Ortbal Kenneth Baker
Ad Reinhardt famously defined sculpture as something you trip over when stepping back to take a longer view of a painting. His intended insult expressed a grain of prophetic truth: much significant sculpture made since the 1960s has proceeded by inertia, blockage, interruption, enigma, flirting with nonsense or verging on invisibility. Robert Ortbal achieves resistant effects in sculpture, irrespective of the materials in hand, by a light but relentless touch that defeats easy dismissal by people who feel the peculiar pressures of his art’s strangeness. But whereas historic Surrealism sought to disturb European bourgeois society’s repressive conventionality, Ortbal contrives oddities to thwart the knowingness by which an information-stuffed culture fends off its own unconscious preoccupations with climate catastrophe, social unwinding and the ascendant violence of true believers of every stripe. Yet, despite linking with grave concerns, Ortbal’s work frequently hums with humor. It manifests in the thought of “Diamond Sutras“ (2015) as a cluster of scorched Christmas trees and in the vision of “Neverland“ -- of its ware tray component -- as an inventory of meringue mountains fresh from the commissary of some gods or other. The cheap casters on which several of his most delicate-looking constructions stand give a tipsy salute to David Smith putting wheels on some of his late sculptures to insinuate their kinship with ordnance. Ortbal may re-weight an obviously found object, such as the carbide-dusted beach ball of “Endless Summer” (2015): a figure for once-innocent escapist fun now inescapably silted by our guilty consciousness of our planet facing the rising tides of a habitability crisis. Diamond Sutras ° 2015 resin, cement, foam silicon carbide 89” x 33” x 34”
Star Skeleton ° 2013 egg carton, resin, plaster mica, silicon carbide and metal flake 10” x 10” x 6”
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The huge suspended installation “Neverland” (2015) -- its title intended to evoke J. M. Barrie, but with an insuppressible reminder of Michael Jackson -- pitches Ortbal‘s “meringue mountains” in a loose grid array far above its viewers. Seen from floor level, the resin-coated carved Styrofoam forms churn visually with associations to snow-bound mountains, to furled frigate sails and clouds with suggestive ambiguities of their own. Ortbal gave the title “Musical Chairs” to linked exhibitions in Sacramento (at the Beatnik function space and the JayJay Gallery) to evoke the shock experienced by losers in the old parlor game of suddenly missing something -- a seat, symbolically, a site for the self -- that seems assured until “the music stops”: a colloquial phrase swollen like lowering clouds with potentially fateful implications. In 2001, the music of everyday life stopped when terrorist massacres shattered Americans’ confidence in their safety as nothing had since Pearl Harbor. It stopped again in 2008, when compulsive gambling by rock stars of high finance induced a near-fatal stroke in the global economy. Countless mortgage-holders who had no skin in the speculative games soon found themselves displaced and downcast. Ortbal makes no explicit reference to these calamities. He knows that they have left nearly everyone except hard ideologues feeling dislocated both emotionally and by a newly uncomfortable lack of fit between events and the terms available to make sense of them. Explicit topical allusions seldom appear in Ortbal’s work, although connections occur willy-nilly, as it may have for viewers of “Long and Narrow” (2015) who happened to see it just after news of the Keystone Excel Pipeline’s cancellation broke. The work’s bunched, cross-sectioned cylinders (with an outrigger silver blob of polyurethane straight out of early Lynda Benglis) might bring to mind some stratum of society’s plumbing in any context.
Long and Narrow ° 2015 wood, cardboard, pvc foam, casters, paint and flock 49” x 29” x 19”
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An admirer of post-minimalist sculpture, with its tendency to make the fabrication process evident, Ortbal took from it a contrary cue to blur the tracks of process in his own work, to provoke in viewers a kind of sensory tentativeness. A darkly elegant piece such as “Midnight” (2015), flocked in deep violet, gives no clue as to its weight or solidity. It might be made of bronze or paper. Colors and finishes throughout his work leave viewers who cannot touch it unsure of its fragility. An open form such as “Sunset” (2014) looks as if it might crumble when touched. Then again, for all the eye can tell, its giddy orange color and crusty-looking texture might mask a steely armature. With moves such as these, Ortbal reawakens in his work’s viewers a feeling for the uncertainty that crackles quietly at the margins of every moment of ordinary, habit-bound vision. This is his way of keeping pace with times of unprecedented invention, in which we see things never witnessed even by our nearest ancestors. It places him among the few contemporary visual artists whose production honors our intimate confrontations with history as Philip Roth defines it: “the unprecedented that is constantly recurring as the present moment.” Kenneth Baker San Francisco - November, 2015 Art critic for The San Francisco Chronicle from 1985 to 2015, is the author of “Minimalism: Art of Circumstance” (1989/1997) and “The Lightning Field” (2009).
Voyager ° 2015 polyurethene foam, pvc pigmented cement, wood 5” x 14” x 4” (detail)
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Midnight ° 2015 paper pulp packing material foam, resin, paint and flock 5” x 14” x 4”
Sunset ° 2015 polyurethene foam 15” Diameter (center)
Lily ° 2015 pink tulle 12” x 12” (right)
(left)
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Installation View: JayJay Gallery 12
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Installation View: JayJay Gallery 14
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Rumors of Emptiness ° 2014 cardboard, resin, plaster, paint and flock 22” x 33” x 20”
Thought Bubble ° 2014 cement on wood 21” x 22” (left)
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Still Warm ° 2015
Hanging Gardens ° 2015
Crystalline Jester II ° 2015
foam, resin, plaster
cardboard, steel, resin
pigments mounted on pedestal
foam, paint and flock
flock and paint
22” x 33” x 20”
18” x 13” x 6”
24” x 25” x 27.5”
(center)
(alcove)
cardboard, resin,
(right)
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Installation View: Beatnik Studios 18
Endless Summer ° 2015 beach-ball, resin, wood paint and silicon carbide 35” x 38” x 37” (left)
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Northern Light ° 2015 venticular film, foam, resin plaster, wood and paint 26” x 55 x 29” (above) detail
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No Title ° 2015 wood, foam, pvc, plexiglass casters, paint and flock 59” x 49” x 17” (left)
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A to Z ° 2015 polyurethene foam, resin molded paper pulp packing 110” x 121” x 4”
A to Z ° 2015 polyurethene foam, resin molded paper pulp packing (detail)
(right)
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Neverland: low road ° 2015
Compass ° 2015
Volunteer ° 2015
styrofoam, resin, steel, plexiglass
cardboard, resin
metal votive rack, pvc
casters, paint and flock
plaster and steel
silicon carbide, paint and flock
39” x 49” x 31” (left)
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21” x 17” x 14” (right)
64” x 17” x 12” (left)
Neverland ° 2015 stainless steel cart styrofoam, resin, paint and flock 72” x 48” x 24” (right)
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Diamond Sutras ° 2015 resin, foam, cement silicon carbide (detail + installation view)
Neverland: high road ° 2015 styrofoam, resin, steel casters, paint and flock 94” x 52” x 37” (right)
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Neverland: high road ° 2015
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Clear Cut ° 2015
styrofoam, resin, steel
cardboard, bamboo skewers
casters, paint and flock
bean bag filling and shellac
94” x 52” x 37”
33” x 27” x 15”
(left)
(above) detail
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Non-Stop ° 2015 cardboard, resin, plaster
Crystalline Jester ° 2015 cardboard, resin, string,
paint and flock
paint and flock
49” x 59” x 17”
120” x 96” x 58”
(above)
(right)
Star Skeleton ° 2013 egg carton, resin, plaster mica, silicon carbide and metal flake 10” x 10” x 6”
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RIFFING ON NEVERLAND Harry Sumrall
It’s been said that art is a two-way street, that the intersection between what has been created and what is perceived is the essence of the experience. It’s been said that some “see” sound, or “hear” color, or construct labyrinths of imaginary line from trains of thought. Dancing to architecture, it’s been called. Bob and I were talking about such things one day while he was working on Neverland. We mused about what might happen if his medium, sculpture, encountered mine, words, both meeting in a musical dialogue, what some would call a “jam.” Here goes.
Look Straight Up. A solid sky suspended in chunks. Air split by geometry. Wind frozen in space. Jetstreams that flow nowhere above islands and continents that techtonics have fragmented into a new geography. Or is it? A fluid landscape rising in uneven elevations valleys giving way to peaks and glaciers ice meeting meadows in nooks and crannies of varying nuance. Or is it?
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Neverland ° 2015 hand carved styrofoam resin, steel, paint and flock 204” x 180” x 120” (detail)
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Thoughts hung like a host of dowagers’ dreams rising and falling as emotion demands as intellect commands as aesthetic ruminations clash in points of color and blocks of shape dictating a visual manifesto a jagged then curvaceous Philosophy of form. Or is it? Time out of balance Physics running backwards Gravity floating in an airy vacuum Flakes of infinities swirling In a quantum bubble. Or it could be, Whatever. A whole with parts or parts apart adding then subtracting dividing then multiplying photons hitting prisms refracting into a kaleidoscopic equation that does not yield to calculation. But does.
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Harry Sumrall Oakland - Summer 2015 Harry Sumrall is the author of two books on popular music and has written for The Washington Post, The New Republic and other publications. He also plays psychedelic garage rock on the side.
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Neverland ° 2015 detail (photographed from above)
Neverland ° 2015 hand carved styrofoam resin, steel, paint and flock 204” x 180” x 120”
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Rumors of Emptiness II ° 2013 screen, aluminum, wood foam and paint 24” x 36” x 32”
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Selected Solo Exhibitions: 2014 2013 2012 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2004 2001 1998 1996 1996 1995 1994
Hemisphere, University Library Gallery Annex, California State University, Sacramento, CA Hide-and-Seek, JayJay Gallery, Sacramento, CA Lattice, University Art Gallery, California State University, Stanislaus, Turlock, CA different parts of remembering, JayJay Gallery, Sacramento, CA Benign: Growth and Neglect, Weigand Gallery, Notre Dame de Namur University, Belmont, CA Neverland, Traywick Contemporary, Berkeley, CA untold wrinkles, JayJay, Sacramento, CA Oxygen’s Shadow, Cabrillo Gallery, Cabrillo College, Soquel, CA New Kingdom, The Oakland Museum of California at City Center, Oakland, CA seeing is believing, Pond, San Francisco, CA Behind One’s Eyes, 1078 Gallery, Chico, CA Lullaby, Four Walls, San Francisco, CA Between Red and Green, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, CA as above, so below, Richmond Art Center, Richmond, CA Taste and See, Ohlone College, Fremont, CA
Selected Installations: 2007 2007 2005 2004 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992
into and out, Aqua-Wynwood, Miami Art Fair, Miami, FL Wallworks III, Traywick Contemporary, Berkeley, CA Eureka Fellowship Exhibition, University of California, Berkeley Art Museum above and beneath, Oakland Art Gallery, Oakland, CA February’s Song, Sculpture Space, Utica, NY Openings, 9-1-1 Media Arts Center, Seattle, WA What is Art for?, The Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA Fertile Waste, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, CO Openings, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, San Francisco, CA Host, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Artists Gallery, San Francisco, CA Navigate: breakfast and desire, AS IS at California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA Stones: The weight of ripening., Contract Design Center, San Francisco, CA Black/White? No neophyte, Opts Art Gallery, San Francisco, CA at the end of desire, Seeing Time Series, Kala Institute, Berkeley, CA
Selected Group Exhibitions: 2012 2011 2010 2007 2007 38
Flatlanders on the Slant, Nelson Gallery, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA Beyond Tradition: Art Legacies - 75th Anniversary, Richmond Art Center, Richmond, CA Blurring the Line, Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, CA Work-A-Day, Blank Space Gallery, Oakland, CA Watershed, Snyderman-Works Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2006 2006 2005 2005 2003 2002 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1994 1993 1992 1991 1990
Chapter Two: A show of objects, New York Design Center, New York, NY Berkeley-Saki Exchange Exhibition, Saki, Japan M Theory, Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco, CA Ornament: The Art of Desire, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art Needle Art: A postmodern sewing circle, A traveling exhibition that visited 15 museums and art centers across the United States Being There: 45 Oakland Artists, The Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA Knowing you, Knowing Me, The Lab, San Francisco, CA, Needle Art, Dean Lesher Center for the Arts, Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek, CA 20th Anniversary Exhibition, SFMOMA Artists Gallery, San Francisco, CA Stirred Not Shaken, Refusalon, San Francisco, CA, Natural Phenomena, Dean Lesher Center for the Arts, Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek, CA Cross Currents, Holy Names University, Oakland, CA Pro Arts Annual, Pro Arts Gallery, Oakland, CA, The Object is Bound, Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco, CA North by Northeast, Richmond Art Center, Richmond, CA Introductions, Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco, CA
Commissions: 2014 2010 2008 2007 2005
The sky begins at your feet, Power Inn Alliance + Sacramento Metro Arts Commission Flora and Fauna, City of Emeryville Bus Shelters, Emeryville, CA Reveries: Water and Sky, University of California, Davis Medical Center, Sacramento, CA I am you, he is she, Oakland International Airport, Oakland, CA Pollinate, Bath Clubs, Miami Beach, FL
Selected Reviews: Baker, Kenneth. “Is Small Beautiful”, San Francisco Chronicle, April 5, 1997 _____. “Two New Outlooks on Conceptual Art”, San Francisco Chronicle, July 31, 1996 _____. “Exhibitions: Pacific Dreams”, San Francisco Chronicle, March 18, 1995 Barlet, Jean. “The connections between private and public art create current exhibit at Skyline Art Gallery”, Pacifica Tribune Arts Correspondent, Mercury News.com, Feb. 3, 2011 Bonetti, David. “There is a ‘there’ at Oakland show” San Francisco Chronicle, March 27, 2002 _____. “Fresh names, stale perspective” San Francisco Examiner, July 20, 1990 Buck, David. “Ornamentation: The Art of Desire”, Artweek, March 2006, Volume 37 Issue 2 Cheng, DeWitt. “Model Magic”, East Bay Express, Sept. 10, 2008, Vol 30 Issue 49 _____. “Uncategorical Imperatives at Kala Gallery”, East Bay Express, November 24, 2010 Cohn, Terri. “Needle Art”, New Art Examiner, September, 1999 Dalkey, Victoria. “Exciting show by Robert Ortbal at JayJay Gallery” Sacramento Bee, April 5, 2013 _____. “Engaging mystery and metaphor”, Sacramento Bee, Friday, December 3, 2010 Dunn, Edward. “Ortbal, wrinkles and all”, Sacramento News and Review, Nov 8, 2007, Volume 19 39
Elliot Sherman, Ann. “Color Scales”, Metro, May 2, 1996 Fahey, Anna. “Spotlight: Robert Ortbal,” Seattle Weekly, August 10, 2000 Goldsmith, Meredith. “New Kingdom” Artweek, Oct, 2004 #35 Issue 8 Hall, Emily. “Drive-By Art” The Stranger Seattle, August 31, 2000, Vol. 9, No. 50 Helfand, Glen. “Stirred Not Shaken,” San Francisco Bay Guardian, March 19, 1997 Maclay, Cathrine. “The Light Fantastic”, San Jose Mercury News, April 12,1993 Meeker, Cheryl. “High Concept Hand Work”, www.stretcher.org, November 2001 Morris, Barbara. “Knowing You, Knowing Me”, Artweek, May/June, #30, 2000 _____. “Robert Ortbal”, Artillery, May-June 2013 Roth, David M., Artist Profile, Art Ltd, Nov/Dec, 2008 _____. “Robert Ortbal @JayJay” SquareCylinder.com, December 15, 2010 Sylva, Bob. “Vision, unclouded.”, Sacramento Bee, December 2, 2007
r o b e rt ortbal
Musical Chairs Sculpture - Drawings - Installation September 11 - November 17 , 2015
Selected Catalogs: Chronologically Arranged Hemisphere, University Library Gallery Annex, California State University, Sacramento, Text by Renny Pritikin and Dean Smith Lattice, University Art Gallery, California State University, Stanislaus, Turlock, CA, 2012, Text by David M. Roth and Robert Ortbal Benign: Growth and Neglect, Weigand Gallery, Notre Dame de Namur University, Belmont, CA, 2009 Text by Paul Bridenbaug, DeWitt Cheng, Maw Shein Win untold wrinkles, JayJay, Sacramento, CA, 2007, Text by Diana L. Daniels Eureka, The Eureka Fellowship Awards 2002-20004, University of California Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Text by Constance M. Lewallen Being There: 45 Oakland Artists, The Oakland Museum of California, 2002, Text by Philip Linhares Knowing You, Knowing Me, The Lab, San Francisco, CA 2000, Text by Dean Smith, Behind One’s Eyes, Gallery 1078, Chico, CA 1998, Text by Lisa Martel and Mary Stump Between Red and Green, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, 1996, Text by Sheila D. Pickett as above, so below, Richmond Art Center, Richmond, CA 1995, Text by Jeff Nathanson, Sandra Rodgers and Timothy T. Taylor
JayJay Gallery Beatnik Studios
All text and essays Copyright © JayJay Gallery Beatnik Studios Kenneth Baker and Harry Sumrall All artwork Copyright © Robert Ortbal Used by permission only. All rights reserved Photography Wes Davis Design Dave Grealish
Selected Fellowships - Artists Residencies - Awards: 2014 2009 2004 2001 1992 1990
Leff-Davis Fund for Visual Arts, Sacramento, CA Jordan Schnitzer Printmaking Residency, Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, Otis, OR Eureka Fellowship, Fleishhacker Foundation, San Francisco, CA Sculpture Space, Utica, NY Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, Edgecomb, ME Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME
Printed by Reprographics Services, Sacramento State
Cover: detail - Neverland- pg 34 40
I am truly grateful to the people who helped in so many different ways to make these two solo shows and catalog become a reality. Thanks to Beth Jones and Lynda Jolly for their commitment and support over the years. The freedom to continually experiment, evolve and grow as an artist with each show we have done, is remarkable. Kelly O’Connell’s persistence ignited this joint-project between the spaces. Her energy and enthusiasm is contagious. Grants from the Leff-Davis Visual Artist Fund and the College of Arts and Letters at the California State University, Sacramento helped fund this project. Special thanks to Emily Leff and Dean Edward Inch for making this important support available to Sacramento artists. I am indebted to Kenneth Baker and Harry Sumrall whose writings in this catalog provide significant insight and context for the work. Their words, together with Wes Davis’s photographs and Dave Grealish’s design skills, document this work beautifully, enabling it to live beyond the shows. Invaluable organizational support and assistance came from Emily Johnson at JayJay and Lindsey Calmettes, Wes Davis, Mandy Draper, Rebecca Ferrick, Karen Popovich, and Michael Tasker at Beatnik. Thank you all. As I prepared and installed the shows this summer, I had the good fortune of working with a volunteer force second to none: Erik Castellanos, Kerry Cottle, Angela Davis, Amanda De Leon, Ryan Flannery, Helen Grandy, Jeremy Jordan, Ka Yi Leung, Jeff Mayry, Som Sayasone, Roberta Rousos, Crystal Ruiz, Emily Swinsick, Aynsley Wille. These artists and friends lent a hand and encouragement with fabrication, installation and opening night performances. Without your kindness and help these shows would have looked very different indeed -heartfelt thanks to you all. Tess Gallagher, Trevor Pope-Lance, Kevin Ptak and Bruce Smallwood offered a level of assistance that I will always appreciate. They continually offered help when I needed it the most. And as always, my love and gratitude to Mary and Hank whose patience, repeated sacrifices, love and support I would be lost without.
JayJay Gallery
Beatnik Studios
Beth Jones + Lynda Jolly
Kelly O’Connell - Gallery Director
5520 Elvas Ave.
723 S Street
Sacramento, CA 95819
Sacramento, CA 95811
916-453-2998
916-400-4281
jayjayart.com
beatnik-studios.com
beth@jayjayart.com + Lynda@jayjayart.com
art@beatnik-studios.com
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