Amid all the hysteria and bombast of the contemporary art world circa 2014, the work of Rob Wynne remains an oasis of subtlety and unapologetic beauty. From his text sculptures of seemingly liquescent glass to drawings executed in beads and thread, the artist celebrates the increasingly antique charms of introspection, whimsy, fragile romance, and cosmic wonder.
In “The Backstage of the Universe,” his new show at Los Angeles’s Gavlak gallery, Wynne conjures an ethereal wonderland shot through with hints of melancholy and longing. The titles of his sublime text pieces—Come Go with Me, I Sleep Under Your Eyes, Masquerade—begin to describe the tenor of his work, but it is Wynne’s virtuosity in marshaling materials to underscore meaning that is most extraordinary.
Working with glass, silk, beads, and glitter, he manages to capture the most elusive human emotions and desires, and freeze them into bewitching talismans. And that, in the end, is the nature of Wynne’s alchemy: His work distills a view of life in which fleeting moments of true love and transcendent beauty arise, and then—poof!—they’re gone
October 31, 2014
