Rob Wynne,(American,b.1950),Float 2017,pigment and embroidery on canvas
New York based artist Rob Wynne works in a variety of mediums ranging from hand-embroidered paintings and collage to sculpture and digital photography,but at heart he is am alchemist.In recent years he had experimented increasingly with molten glass;each glass piece produced with his assistants is hand-poured without a mold,and silvered after cooling.Then the multiple pieces are shaped into dynamic,often expansive wall installations whose individual components sometimes numbers in the hundreds.Although the entire process is highly methodical and guided by preparatory drawings,the multifaceted end product is ultimately inflected by chance.Wynne is drawn to what he calls the "alchemical nature"at once ephemeral and literal,transformative and obdurate,glass is the ideal medium through which to communicate an elusive multiplicity of meanings.
Wynne transforms not only materials but words,taking phrases from literature and popular culture,detaching them from their original contexts,and repurposing them in cryptic or contradictory ways.Whether poetic meditations,tongue-in-cheek quotations,syntactical riffs on the structure of words,or double entendre inspired by Marcel Duchamp,Wynne's metamorphoses of language lie at the center of his conceptual practice.
Rob Wynne,(American,b.1950),Float 2017,pigment and embroidery on canvas
New York based artist Rob Wynne works in a variety of mediums ranging from hand-embroidered paintings and collage to sculpture and digital photography,but at heart he is am alchemist.In recent years he had experimented increasingly with molten glass;each glass piece produced with his assistants is hand-poured without a mold,and silvered after cooling.Then the multiple pieces are shaped into dynamic,often expansive wall installations whose individual components sometimes numbers in the hundreds.Although the entire process is highly methodical and guided by preparatory drawings,the multifaceted end product is ultimately inflected by chance.Wynne is drawn to what he calls the "alchemical nature"at once ephemeral and literal,transformative and obdurate,glass is the ideal medium through which to communicate an elusive multiplicity of meanings.
Wynne transforms not only materials but words,taking phrases from literature and popular culture,detaching them from their original contexts,and repurposing them in cryptic or contradictory ways.Whether poetic meditations,tongue-in-cheek quotations,syntactical riffs on the structure of words,or double entendre inspired by Marcel Duchamp,Wynne's metamorphoses of language lie at the center of his conceptual practice.