Robert Kinmont "Evidence"
Alexander and Bonin
This event has ended.
Robert Kinmont’s one-person exhibition, Evidence, opens at Alexander and Bonin on Saturday, October 22nd. His conceptual photography and sculpture from the 60s and 70s were exhibited at this gallery in 2009, many for the first time. The forthcoming exhibition will focus on works made since 2009.
Born in Los Angeles in 1937, Kinmont grew up in the desert near Bishop, CA and has lived most of his adult life in northern California. These rural environments have come to provide the practical and conceptual underpinning of his practice. The new works continue Kinmont’s use of natural and common materials to explore enigmatic relationships, basic to human existence.
127 Willow Forks (This is Who I Am), 2010 is comprised of three rows of forked willow branches cut to various lengths and gently attached to the wall. The forks are accompanied by a birch plywood case on the floor containing the surplus willow forks with the title stenciled on its side. For Kinmont these forks bring to mind a reference to one’s life as well as to the variety found in any single category in nature.
The arrangement of the forks functions as a metaphor for structure and diversity in society. The ‘slingshot’ form is reiterated in Unfinished Weapon, 2009. Testing the objects’ capacity to bear meaning, a giant forked log is hollowed out and holds 218 small rocks wrapped individually in paper; invisible to the viewer, 109 have ideas written on the inside and 109 are blank.
Truman Meadows, 2010-2011 is an open douglas fir and plywood box filled with soil, obsidian, and pine cones with the words ‘I WANT TO KNOW’ stenciled on all four interior sides. It references a remote valley in the mountains north of Bishop visited by the artist many years ago. During that visit he came to realize that the origination of meaning is the second or third step in the unfolding of understanding.
Kinmont’s work takes a corporeal turn in Home Sweet Home: three long, rectangular plywood cases narrate the cycle of human life in three acts: the first box contains nothing but dirt; the second, a puffy, clean white pillow sits atop the dirt; the third, a flat, dirty, used pillow is pressed into the back corner.
Media
Schedule
from October 22, 2011 to December 03, 2011
Opening Reception on 2011-10-21 from 18:00 to 20:00