Rob Wynne

Courtesy of the artist and Gavlak Palm Beach / Los Angeles

Rob Wynne tests the boundaries of kitsch and beauty, sappiness and profundity in his delicately crafted mixed-media objects, installations, drawings, and canvases. Though he uses a range of techniques and mediums, hand-blown glass is central to his work. Claiming that he is “always trying to break rules and embrace the imperfection in glass making,” Wynne demonstrates its malleability, shaping it into text pieces and objects exquisite and absurd, including eyeballs and mushrooms. Text, too, is key to his practice.

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. In his recent work, Wynne choreographs large hand-poured letters of mirrored glass on the walls to embody his collection of borrowed thoughts such as ADIEU, VISIBLE SILENCE, and BE COME!.

Rob Wynne 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; the Columbus Museum of Art, OH; and the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris.