罗比罗兰兹

source: highlike
Statement: Robbie Rowlands is a Melbourne based artist whose work explores notions of stability and vulnerability through the manipulation of objects and environments. His repetitious and precise cuts and the resulting distortions reflect the inescapable passing of time that affects everything around us. Rowlands’ works have been described as ‘spotlighting the history, humanity and function’ of his subjects. His manipulated objects and spaces blur the boundaries between our fabricated world and the natural world. The philosopher Martin Heidegger argued that objects are often invisible to us, gathered up as they are within a context of functionality and use. It is only when things break down that we become aware of them, seeing them with fresh eyes. In many ways Heidegger’ observation could form the basis of an approach to Robbie Rowlands’ work. Rowlands takes objects that are often forgotten, invisible or transparent to us, objects that exist on the verge of disappearance, and stages a kind of ‘breakdown’, inviting us to rediscover the object, poised somewhere between what it was and what it might become. Rowlands bases his sculptural work on things that exist at the fringes of our awareness, utilitarian objects such as lampposts or desks. He refashions them into something altogether different yet in a way that never allows their original identity to be shed. The mass produced and functional designs are softened and framed in terms of a new aesthetic, giving the object a renewed energy or sensibility. The effect is to reveal hidden potential in what had come to be regarded as outmoded. If the former object is largely unrecognizable in the new sculpture, the process is not one of violence, rather there is a sense of redemption, as if the object has been liberated from obsolescence, from forgetfulness. This redemptive sense is twofold; on the one hand the object has become something else, inhabiting a new and often sensuous form. On the other hand we can’t help reading this new form back into the old; we sense that the change is not entirely arbitrary, that maybe this new energy, this emerging beauty and potential was always there in the original object, even as it was sat on, written on, or passed by on the way to work. As such his work enables us to reflect upon the wider process of change, upon what our relation with things might suggest about us, and perhaps invites us to inject a little more care into the quotidian realm. An early work entitled Comfort in Sadness encapsulates many of the concerns that would shape the artist’s future projects. In this piece we can identify an old bathtub whose base had been repeatedly sliced open allowing the tub to curl upwards into a crescent-like shape. The result is a piece of sculpture that is both visually arresting and imbued with a powerful affective resonance. The work’s title ‘Comfort in Sadness’ stages precisely the kind of opposing tensions that inform much of the artist’s work. Not comfort and sadness or comfort or sadness, but comfort in sadness. An invitation perhaps to tease out a complex melancholic reaction to change or loss, to see how there is a certain paradoxical comfort to be had in sadness. This dialectic of comfort and sadness opens up a rich theme that Rowlands had pursued since. Often exploring the ambiguity of domestic spaces and objects: bathtubs, interior rooms, beds and chairs, the artist reveals the dilemmas of ‘comfort’, of our investment in the familiar, suggesting how a certain level of sadness might shadow the comfort we create for ourselves. More recently, Rowlands has had the opportunity to create site specific installations in spaces that might once have housed the kind of half-forgotten objects he likes to work with. Utilizing a wide variety of buildings and environments that have included a Bus Depot, a Toorak mansion and a beach shack, the artist has been able to project his thematic concerns into spaces rather than upon individual objects. Despite the obvious differences in scope and choice of medium, it is clear that the installations share many similarities with the individual sculptures. Significantly these spaces have themselves all been on the verge of transformation, either condemned, or subject to renovation. Of course it is this very condition, poised on the edge of erasure that allows the artist to work. The materials and structures are no longer of use; the artist is free to do what he wants with it. However, because these places and things are placed under the sign of erasure: condemned buildings, abandoned objects, things whose use-value has become obsolete, he is able to explore the complexity of reactions involved when we erase or replace our sense of the familiar. Not everyone has seen Rowlands’ installation work in this light. Perhaps the enclosed spaces of the installations heightens our sensitivity to change, causing some to view the kinds of transformative processes as largely invasive, even suggestive of a certain kind of violence. Yet if the cutting up of interior spaces – walls and floors – can provoke a sense of the space being ‘gutted’, there is often more going on here, once you can get past the visually stunning effects of say, a floor being cut up and curled, leaving a hole in the ground. Rather than simply finding evidence of structural evisceration, it is possible to find a more subtle process at work, one that ‘suspends’ the fate of the condemned building, and allows us to contemplate this scene of frozen entropy as the room almost unravels before our eyes. One is also able to discern new patterns within the altered room, new symmetries and plays of light that extend beyond a ‘flight’ response. The works on display here lend themselves to this kind of reading. The artist takes spaces and objects and shapes them in a form that makes them almost unrecognizable, and of course there is certain violence, an element of destructiveness in the process. But the effect is productive. At a sensorial level we shift between remembering and reconstructing the old object and responding to the reconstituted form. This is essentially a process of openness and suspension rather than simply an exercise of force. The energies and possibilities of the object are unlocked in an engaging if ultimately elusive way, as the forms of the sculptural move toward but elude symmetrical or identifiable shapes and patterns. Extract from Disintegration catalogue essay By Simon Cooper Robbie Rowlands is a most unconventional sculptor. He cuts, bends and reshapes everyday objects of our world to facilitate encounters with another world entirely. His practice is formulated not by acts of creation, but by object modification and spatial renegotiation. We find the props that provide support to our lives have themselves become wilted and prone. Rowlands throws the finitude of the object into question, and engages the uncertainty of space and the ambiguity of time. In suggesting a break down of their composite orders, his artworks are able to modulate their concrete appearance, and usher in a transitional, temporal state. They play on the ambiguity of becoming, being and unbecoming; that is, their position on the scale between birth and death is a speculative matter. Rowlands works with existing objects and spaces, which sometimes extends to entire buildings, in a practice that seeks to renegotiate the empirical, and challenge the way we see the world. His works apply transition and transformation to static objects and casts them as biological forms; prone and vulnerable, but also full of wonder and potential. For Rowlands, the process of decline and decay becomes an aesthetic event, and he manipulates the disintegrating form as a means of fathoming new forms – unique, bizarre and barely recognisable from their original shape. An ambiguity occurs that deliminates functionality and aesthetics. His process is one of simple cutting into objects, with repetition and with precision, with the result of that object becoming deformed. There is a necessary application of violence here, but it is perpetrated with a gentle respect for the form and its history; indeed, Rowlands’ transformations are often a means of examining the history of the object, while simultaneously accelerating its decline. The path to dissolution brings about an uncanny modulation of any form. Once intact and purposeful, it now languishes in disuse. As decomposition sets in, surfaces rupture and inner structures collapse. The resulting rubble is often unidentifiable, before it disintegrates completely into dust and blows away. Rowlands’ works represent, in part, a synopsis of this process. He employs an exaggerated decay as an agent of awakening the inner beauty of objects. He shows that the carnage of time elicits a transformation that reveals the wonders within. The death of Rowlands’ objects is an act of transcendence, as they pass from one life (of purpose and utility) to the next (of aesthetic contemplation). The nature of Rowlands’ donor objects bears some consideration here. He carefully selects objects that exist at the fringe of our awareness, being in such common use that we barely notice them at all. These might include bath tubs, chairs, tables and beds, through to entire houses. Within the built environment Rowlands exacts his program of radical decay upon street light poles, electricity poles, boom gates and football oval posts. This myriad of daily detritus, invisible while in use, ironically only become apparent to us through their newfound dysfunction. That the objects are presented to us as artworks implies a new meaning, and a new reading – stripped of all functionality the objects become aesthetic specimens. The act of cutting incisions into the objects has the effect of making them either curl outward or inwardly upon themselves. The simple timber chair becomes dissected and is splayed across the floor like the remnants of some bizarre medical autopsy. Ladders and crutches – both engineered for structural integrity – become wilted and themselves in need to support. Boom gates, beds and baths, meanwhile, curl inward in spirals that recall shell creatures. The recontextualisation of the object creates an altogether new form; a hybrid of a static man-made article and a still-evolving biological mutant. Part of the attraction of Rowlands’ work is that we recognise something from our own world, which has been renegotiated to reveal qualities that had lain dormant. This subversion of the familiar achieves its greatest impact in Rowlands’ large scale interventions of buildings that have been scheduled for demolition. Here, Rowlands exerts a particular kind of deconstruction over built forms. His selective stripping of inside and outside surfaces – of peeling back the façade – might be better described as a kind of rebirth. These containers of space, be they industrial or domestic, pantheistic or secular, exude a fresh aroma of discovery once Rowlands has set his saws to work. This careful structural dismemberment reveals buildings as fragile shells, and as we peer through the gaps he has created, we observe the rot and entropy of time. There is an undercurrent of scientific curiosity at play here, but the overriding achievement of Rowlands’ spatial work is that he transforms entire edifices into singular objects for consideration. Our reading of space is transformed, as we marvel at the way a single layer in a long unbroken strip has been dissected from the ceiling, walls and floor, and accumulated into an apple core-like spiral on the ground. The infliction of decay has never been more seductively imposed. Simon Gregg curator.
Work: Wall cut – Rmit Storey Hall Gallery – 2009
Photographer: Mark Ashkanasy
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source: robbie-rowlands-depot-installation
Robbie Rowlands looks closely at the everyday objects around us, he questions their nature, their stability. Working both familiar and found materials, Rowlands cuts into and manipulates the recognisable, peeling back one form to reveal another, reflecting upon the passage of time and what lies beneath the surface of our familiar world.
Robbie Rowlands was born in 1968 and lives and works in Melbourne, he graduated from The Victorian College of the Arts in 1999. Rowlands studied at Pratt Institute, New York after, his first solo exhibition FOUND came out of this work. Rowlands participated in the exhibitions Structure, Space and Place, at the Tower Hill Memorial, Kangaroo Ground, 2007 and 26 Surf Street, Merricks, 2007, The offering 2009.
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source: mymodernmet
Melbourne-based artist Robbie Rowlands manipulates and distorts unexpected spaces in these surreal sculptures. In his work, he bends and twists everyday items, pieces of outdoor landscapes, and sections of interior buildings that have been either condemned or are scheduled for renovations, and refigures them into these creative distortions.
There is a precision and symmetry to all of the pieces, as he tears up strips of floorboards, bends pieces of wall, or twists the pole of a street sign into a snake-like shape. His bio explains that his manipulated objects and space “blur the boundaries between our fabricated world and the natural world.” The destructive nature of tearing up floors and walls allows viewers to visualize the old space and contemplate and reinterpret the new scene. Philsopher Martin Heidegger says that, “It is only when things break down that we become aware of them, seeing them with fresh eyes.”
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source: nambrenaurbano
Excelentes trabajos de intervención realizado por el australiano Robbie Rowlands, donde utiliza los mismos materiales del lugar para formar sus obras. Espirales y círculos hechas con las partes dan una sensación de descubrir el siginificado oculto que él encuentra en las cosas.
Muy buen conjunto de obras escultóricas que vale la pena postearlos. Rowlands posee un vasto curriculum de exposiciones y exhibiciones alrededor de los mejores museos.
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source: urba-actu
Robbie Rowlands est un artiste basé à Melbourne dont le travail explore les notions de stabilité et de vulnérabilité à travers la manipulation d’objets et d’éléments naturels.
Ses coupes répétitives et précises, ainsi que les distorsions qui en résultent reflètent le passage incontournable du temps qui affecte tout autour de nous.
Ces manipulations brouillent les frontières entre notre monde fabriqué et le monde naturel.
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source: ssmlook
Abbiamo trattato in precedenza Lucio Fontana. Dobbiamo dirigerci in un altro emisfero, più precisamente in Australia, per trovarci di fronte la continuazione del lavoro del nostro artista italiano. Così come Fontana tagliava accuratamente le sue tele per aprire la sua arte alla tridimensionalità, Robbie Rowlands, invece, apre gli spazi tridimensionali interni verso l’esterno, tramite degli elementi che si avvolgono a ricciolo. La location appare sempre degradata, uno squarcio qualsiasi non si noterebbe minimamente in un simile contesto, ma la sua perfezione nel taglio e quel suo modo di adagiarsi a terra rendono il tutto molto sovrannaturale. Sicuramente la potenza artistica è ben minore dell’impatto avuto sul mondo dell’arte delle tele della serie Concetti Spaziali, Rowlands non infrange la barriera di una dimensione per penetrare la successiva, che sarebbe il tempo, ma rimane, comunque, un ottimo esempio di visual artist.
source: liveinternet
Австралийский музыкальный продюсер и художник Робби Рональдс (Robbie Rowlands) – обожает заброшенные города и микрорайоны, готовые под снос. Именно там, в опустевших и уже никому не нужных зданиях он устраивает свои перформансы, играя формой и меняя содержание.
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source:neyap
Melbourne doğumlu Robbie Rowlands, eline geçen her çeşit testereyle yaşamı dilimliyor. Estetik kaygının, sanatın içeriğinin biraz önüne geçtiği bir çalışma stilini benimsemiş bu adam. Çok güzel işleri var çok.
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source: journal-du-design
L’artiste basé à Melbourne Robbie Rowlands crée des sculptures segmentées impressionnantes avec des objets du quotidien ou des lieux de vie. Il explore les notions de stabilité et de vulnérabilité par la manipulation des objets et de l’environnement.
Ses coupes répétitives, précises et les altérations (pelures) résultantes reflètent le passage inéluctable du temps qui nous affecte. Les objets détournés et les espaces troublent les frontières entre notre monde fabriqué et le monde naturel.