Amber Robles-Gordon WIRED June 18 – July 16, 2011
Pleasant Plains Workshop is pleased to present a solo project, Wired, by artist Amber Robles-Gordon. Robles-Gordon recently received her MFA from Howard University and works in mixed media, textile, photography, and painting.
All of the works presented here have wire as their structural core – it forms an armature used by the artist to build wall works that are familiar in their materiality yet remain firmly grounded in abstraction. Using found objects, the works are public declarations of private mementos that explore patterns, color, and materials, while engaging with Robles-Gordon’s cultural identity –a blend of Caribbean, Latin American, and African American.
In this regard, the two works that anchor the main gallery wall act as family crests with their regal form and tight-knit coils, while many of the other works are more playfully ceremonial, harkening thoughts of Carnivale and celebratory cultural objects. The artist’s site-specific window installation, ‘Beyond the Visual Rainbow,’ is evocative of a net cast by the artist that captures fragments of a personal history within the entangled bits of clothing and household items. Robles-Gordon was born in Puerto Rico and grew up in Arlington VA. Her family heritage stems from Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, and British Virgin Islands. With ‘Beyond the Visual Rainbow’, she charts her personal history through a patchwork of cultural and familial traditions, as well as object that evoke femininity and the coming of age.
Robles-Gordon describes her practice as being influenced by artists such as Sam Gilliam and Alma Thomas. The Gilliam reference is perhaps most striking in Robles-Gordon’s work on draped fabric (not exhibited here), but is also relevant in her use of color and assemblage materials in Wired. Her playful approach to art-making is also noteworthy. The absence of complete closure, and her interest in materiality, is attuned to the concerns of contemporary abstractionists like Cordy Ryman and Lauren Luloff, both of whom also work with sculptural wall works.
The artist’s use of unconventional materials to create a new vernacular narrative is also evocative of Eva Hesse. Both artists have underscores of femininity and gender identity in their work without necessarily wanting to be categorized by those decisions.
With this exhibition, Amber Robles-Gordon has achieved a visual celebration of color, texture and identity. Robles-Gordon is an emerging artist whose work is hard wired for success.
-Kristina Bilonick and Matt Smith-Chavez
Pleasant Plains Workshop
2608 Georgia Avenue N.W.
Washington, DC 20001
http://pleasantplainsworkshop.blogspot.com/
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