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September Issue 2006
Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, NC, Features Works by Dario Robleto
The Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Greensboro, NC, presents the exhibition, Dario Robleto: Chrysanthemum Anthems, a solo exhibition of work by this San Antonio-based artist, focuses on symbols of grief and mourning connected to soldiers of war. The works in the exhibition are based upon material culture produced during the early development of the United States and integrate artifacts from wars, particularly those that have taken place on US soil such as the Civil War and Revolutionary War. The exhibition will be on view from Sept. 24 through Dec. 17, 2006.
Robleto has achieved international recognition for his sculptures and installations that use artifacts to revive particular histories. Heavily influenced by DJ culture and the theory and practice of mixing and sampling, Robleto fabricates objects using unusual and disparate ingredients such as bones, melted records and flower petals. For example, the materials for A Soul Waits for a Body That Never Arrives (2004-05) include cast and carved bone dust from every bone in the body, stained and sealed with homemade balm (almond oil, beeswax, honeysuckle, resurrection plant, life everlasting, motherwort, mistletoe, sundew, Lady's mantle, eternal flower, life root, immortal root), fragments of American soldier's uniforms from various wars, wool from combat casualty blankets, and melted bullet lead and shrapnel from various wars. Works such as this imply that meaning can be derived from the history of materials even after they have been transformed into something else, or, as Barry Schwabsky writes about the artist in Artforum, the work acts, "as if to claim that a person's soul must be re-embodied in the flowers that have sprouted from his corpse."
The exhibition at the Weatherspoon, curated by Xandra Eden, includes recent works on paper, wall-mounted wreaths, and sculpture. A uniquely designed publication that includes a critical essay, images of the work in the exhibition, and the artist's biography and bibliography will accompany the exhibition.
Dario Robleto: Chrysanthemum Anthems is part of the Falk Visiting Artist series, a program produced collaboratively since 1982 by the Weatherspoon Art Museum and the Art Department at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The program, which comprises a short residency of graduate critiques, public talks and an exhibition, gives students at the University and members of the community alike an opportunity to meet and learn from artists who are active in the field. Past Falk Visiting Artists include Anne Chu, Michael Ray Charles, Carroll Dunham and Lynda Benglis.
Dario Robleto (b. 1972, San Antonio, TX) received his BFA in 1997 from the University of Texas-San Antonio. Solo exhibitions include Fear and Tenderness in Men/The Biology of Hope, D'Amelio Terras (opening early Sept. 2006); Diary of a Resurrectionist at Galerie Praz-Delavallade, Paris; Say Goodbye to Substance at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, New York; A Surgeon, A Scalpel, and a Soul at Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; and The Polar Soul at ArtPace, San Antonio. Group exhibitions include Whitney Biennial (2004), Treble, Sculpture Center, New York (2004); and Rock My World, California College of Arts and Crafts, San Francisco (2002) among many others. He is represented by Inman Gallery, Houston and D'Amelio Terras, New York.
An Artist's Lecture will be offered on Sept. 25, 2006, at 5:30pm and an Artist's Gallery Walk-Through will be offered on Sept. 26, 2006, at 4pm.
The Weatherspoon Art Museum at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro has one of the foremost collections of modern and contemporary art in the Southeast. Through a dynamic annual calendar of exhibitions and educational programs, the Weatherspoon provides an opportunity for audiences to consider artistic, cultural, and social issues of our time as it enriches the life of our university and community. The Weatherspoon Art Museum was founded in 1941. A bequest in 1950 from the renowned collection of Claribel and Etta Cone, which included prints and bronzes by Henri Matisse and other works on paper by American and European modernists, helped to establish the Weatherspoon's permanent collection. Today, the collection represents all major art movements from the beginning of the 20th century to the present. The Weatherspoon is not only an educational facility serving the students and faculty of UNCG, but is also a nationally recognized art museum serving the Triad communities and the artists/art lovers within its reach.
For more information check our NC Institutional
Gallery listing, call the Museum at 336/334-5770 or at (www.weatherspoon.uncg.edu).
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