Rob Wynne’s art is intertwined with allusive phrases that he appropriates from literature, television and conversations. Once extracted from their context, and juxtaposed with Wynne’s surreal, nostalgic imagery, they create a Proustian atmosphere where such figures as Louis Aragon, Maria Callas, and Georges Bataille seem to have a dialogue. As put by critic Michael Duncan, “Wynne strips away the identities of the texts and images he appropriates. Free from the baggage, he uses his appropriations as revealing koans to praise and challenge the glories and mysteries of art.”
Since 1992, Wynne has created his glass wall sculptures composed of hand-poured, mirrored-glass elements. Recalling their origin, Wynn said, “A ladle of molten glass slipped out of my hand and spilled onto the floor, making a huge splat…it was a kind of cosmic explosion…that led me to realize I that I could actually control it and start making actual letters out of it.” Each piece is made in a labor-intensive, multi-step process resulting in glimmering, seductive, and irregularly-shaped compositions offering a personal touch that is absent in other text works by contemporaneous artists such as Jenny Holzer or Barbara Kruger. Both in materiality and subject matter, Wynne’s glass and mixed media works demonstrate his mastery of contradiction and keen ability to make art from the momentary.
Rob Wynne (b. 1948) has had numerous solo gallery exhibitions, including JGM Galerie, Paris; Galerie Edward Mitterand, Geneva; and Holly Solomon Gallery, New York. His work has been featured in group exhibitions at the McNay Art Museum, TX; P.S.1 Institute for Contemporary Art, NY; Long Beach Museum of Art, CA; The Drawing Center, NY; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA. Wynne's work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; The Museum of Modern Art, NY; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; Centre Pompidou, France; The Norton Museum of Art, FL; the Columbus Museum of Art, OH; and the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris.
