Richard Heller Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition for London-based artist, Max Rumbol, entitled Give Me a Fulcrum and I Shall Move the World. This is Rumbol's first solo exhibition with the gallery.
Max Rumbol's assemblages transcend the practices of sculpture, wood carving and painting bringing the result into a unique blend of craft and high art. The works in the show largely reflect on artistry and authenticity, exploring the dialogue between art objects and the history or myths that surround them, drawing parallels to Isaac Newton's epiphanic tale of the discovery of gravity. Rumbol's process-based works develop rather slowly - his approach somewhat at odds with the notion of the 'Eureka moment' referenced in the imagery. The works begin as pencil sketches which progress into digital drawings, finally reproduced and transformed into a physical assemblage through a process involving laser cutting, digital printing, collage and painting. The works particularly reflect on surface and its relationship to the digital space and the screen, with Rumbol manually working the planes in different ways to reveal or hide the trace of the artist and the machine's hand. In doing so, a dialogue is created where one can question what the artist's role is or where their hand lies.
These works all take the loose form of a tree - reflecting on both the art historical trope and the idea of folklore and memory. From Caspar David Friedrich to Albert Oehlen, artists have always considered trees to be of significance, reflecting on the histories and stories they both witness and tell as constants in an ever-changing landscape. The trees in this show operate somewhat like pivots, providing the support for the artist to fully explore the potentialities of painting, playing with gesture, texture, objects and relief. The layered nature of the works both engages with the long history of worked and reworked surfaces within abstraction, as well as the layers of bark a tree accumulates through its life cycle. The conversation between the fragmented and disparate surfaces and elements helps to create a tension which echoes the way art is experienced in person versus the way in which it is circulated via the screen.
Rumbol (b. 1997) received his BFA from the Ruskin School of Art at the University of Oxford, England. He currently lives and works in London.
