We stopped by Roberts & Tilton to check out their latest exhibition, In The Making, featuring works by Noah Davis, Michael Dopp, Gregory Michael Hernandez, India Lawrence, Simone Leigh & Chi tra Ganesh, Dashiell Manley, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Aspen Mays, Kori Newki rk, Kour Pour, Fran Siegel and Natasha Wheat.
Art making at its best and most persuasive, is essentially a two-tiered process that begins with a stratagem, a singular idea or
concept that derives from the impulse to create work that pushes the boundaries of thought. The materials are employed in the
service of the concept, extending that thought even further outward. This process or conceptualization also involves the element of
simultaneity wherein the work is realized within a physical space, which then becomes yet another element influencing the way the
work is seen, received and ultimately talked about. Thus, the “making” of any conceptually based work is ongoing, constantly active
and activated.
For example, artists like David Hammons, Richard Tuttle, Louise Bourgeois and Bruce Nauman utilized their materials as an
extension of their concepts and as a means of tying ideas together, and then summing them up in specifically conclusive ways.
What may appear to be a simple line drawing, piece of hanging cloth or wooden structure ultimately pulls away from itself to
reveal another oddly discordant level, a fractious errant mark or new direction lurking beneath the surface. It is this revelation that
keeps the works in the exhibition vigorous and active. Similarly and in keeping with this process of extension and activation, the
gallery itself becomes an added dimension in this process, the way the work is installed and situated within the space creating yet
another layered dialectic.
In The Making brings together a group of artists whose primary working strategy embodies a purely multidisciplinary practice
that derives from conceptual thought, pushing the envelope as it were between genres and disciplines. This work derives from
its own genesis, examining its own nature without sentiment, and supports what the critic and conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth
described in his essay, "Art after Philosophy," as "All art (after Duchamp) is conceptual (in nature) because art only exists
conceptually.” In the Making implies inherently that there is no going back to a purist philosophy of traditional form as artists
have done in the past, expanding the boundaries of what was once represented. We can only ever keep moving forward into the
Following are a few photos from the exhibition.
In The Making
Roberts & Tilton
Through March 31, 2012
