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In his most expansive presentation of works to date, Robert Moreland’s third solo exhibition with The Hole grounds itself in the artist’s minimal aesthetics harmoniously with the gallery’s 8,000-square-foot industrial backdrop. Further investigating form, the artist will include a new series of free-standing sculptures of angular lines reminiscent of the folds along the profiles of his wall works. Opening November 5, 2022, the exhibition will run through December 31, 2022.

Known for his three-dimensional hangings that challenge the formalism of painting and – due to their inclusion of natural materials like cotton canvas and leather – have an almost soft, emotional take on minimalist sculpture, Moreland turns to metalwork to further engage the viewer in his own study of geometry and perception.

As an introduction to his studies, the artist offers his maquettes – small folded and painted card-stock paper models of potential paintings. At this scale, one is presented with the opportunity to consider the work at a birds-eye level, where the folds of the work most subtly affect the sharp colorful lines of the painting. They become akin to architectural models, but with the delicate nature of origami. Educated by the investigations in paper, the final paintings push the effect of light and shadow across the folded surfaces further with their volume. Exquisitely well-made, the cleanly tacked canvas wraps around perfectly sanded panels that are hinged together with leather. With each degree the curves and angles of the stretched canvas differs, the raw canvas and paint evolve into a range of tones. Observing the wall works at varying viewpoints, the colorful, simple geometric shapes in paint become complicated polygons as they visually slip out of sight and the panels rise and dip along their folds. When the painted shapes are entirely obscured and the canvas is examined only from its profile, the density of the panels is replaced by the negative space behind them, offering only outlines of the forms.

Here begins the thread from Moreland’s paintings to his free-standing sculptures. The metal works have a fineness that inherently relates close in airy weight to the maquettes. Without any flat planes of material to catch light and cast shadows, the new metal sculptures push the perception of three-dimensional as two-dimensional, or vice versa, as does the geometrical relation to point of view in the canvas wall works. The artist’s monumental stainless steel sculpture Object One, 2022, that was permanently installed at the Adamwon Sculpture Park in Namwon, South Korea this summer, became the artist’s creative antecedent to the latest thin steel sculptures. The new works consider the negative spaces in order to create and suggest similar compositions.

“With the large solid steel sculptures one cannot view the entire piece at the same time so you have to observe it from different angles. Removing the obvious volume and focusing on the negative space requires the viewer to fill in the spaces for themselves. One now gets to see the whole piece at once.”

– Robert Moreland

Robert Moreland lives and works in Los Angeles, California, and hails from south Louisiana. His work is included in the Frederick R. Weisman Collection and he has been exhibited at the Louisiana State Museum, LA, the Shaw Center for the Arts, LA, the Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans, LA, Wilding Cran Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, Library Street Collective, Detroit, MI, and G. Gallery, Korea.

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