Review: “Roberto Jackson Harrington: Mama’s Boy or an Inexplicable Reasoning” at La Mecha Contemporary, El Paso

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In the way of a homecoming, Roberto Jackson Harrington returned to El Paso, Texas, for his solo exhibition Mama’s Boy or an Inexplicable Reasoning at La Mecha Contemporary. La Mecha is located in a cool, downtown-adjacent grassroots complex called The Falstaff, a “community art and culture space” consisting of a horseshoe-shaped series of buildings filled with winding galleries, a coffee shop, an outdoor bar, studios, and more. Opening night for Mama’s Boy was part of a “Last Thursdays” art crawl, and was a laid-back eclectic scene with powerhouse art. 

Born and raised in El Paso, the now Austin-based Harrington creates sculptural, collage, and digital works founded on the idea of potential. Themes of sustainability, consumerism, collaboration, and useless systems abound in his seemingly piecemeal assemblages and collage. 

However, for Mama’s Boy, a very personal thread comes through the artist’s work. In the exhibition statement, Harrington explains his mother’s journey from Zacatecas, Mexico to the United States, and reflects upon her journey from the lens of being a parent himself. According to the artist: “I understand and appreciate the immeasurable sacrifices, hard work and determination my mother exerted to provide those benefits to me and my siblings. Her determination and hope have afforded me these opportunities and have grown, in one generation, from a life of manual labor to one of immense privilege as an artist. In general, I see my work as a celebration and observance of my mother’s determination to improve life for herself and her generations to come.”

The nod to privilege, opportunities, and the arts industry in comparison to the sacrifices of an immigrant’s plight align with Harrington’s tongue-in-cheek, earnest work, which doesn’t take itself too seriously. Paradoxically, Mama’s Boy gnaws at heavy concerns: mass consumption (of both goods, ideas, and resources), the physical reality of the world, and the idea of a “self.” 

Untitled collages of bulldozer-like vehicles are framed by grass-green and deep-blue squares of paint on the wall, with anthropomorphic, multi-object sculptures resting on faux fur and plywood platforms suspended off the wall by hardware and bungee cords; suspense is the key word for these installations. When discussing his use of alternative displays, such as the potentially-precarious plywood platforms or stacks of bottled sodas that function as pedestals, Harrington mused that, “if my sculpture degree at UTEP [The University of Texas at El Paso] taught me anything, it’s how to make things stand up!” The artist’s craftsmanship can’t be debated — many of the works in this show could almost be luxury objects, with a singularly specific, expensive use. His clean, sanitarily presented collage prints, hung in neat squares, read like a curated Instagram grid for the elite shopper. 

Harrington’s (three of five), Leitmotiv Tagliere-LMT22-2022 resembles a rattlesnake, with primary yellow eraser caps jutting off silicone straws for fangs. The visuals in this entire body of work bite, with acidic colors punctuating throughout the exhibition space. It’s easy to imagine the artist haphazardly grabbing whatever mundane objects surround him, then playing around with them — building blocks of future artworks, born of everyday clutter. This reminds me of AI-generated art, in a way. In the age of artificial intelligence, our culture is rife with the detritus of both materialism and intellectualism. AI-created images, however, even when given innocuous prompts, will often turn out to be sexist, racist, or simply cliché. It seems the massive accumulation of our patterns, our consumption, and our visual world churns out our lowest impulses at worst, our most boring at best.

Unlike AI and its grossly blasé conglomerations, Harrington gathers what seem to be objects that are lying around any parent’s living room, garage, or stashed in the back of their family-friendly SUV. There is a seeming randomness to the materials he chooses. Also, there is a personal, bodily quality to each item: an earring that was lost between the bed and end table, toothbrushes that scrubbed the recesses of someone’s cheek, a keychain that was rubbed with unconscious thought, a bungee cord that was pulled tight over furniture in the truck bed, a guitar amp that was heard and relished. The body, while not depicted, is still hugely present in this work. 

The sculptures, like Phloper, Leitmotiv Carattere-LMC24-2024, lend themselves to both man/machine biological reductionism and its critique. Rather than functioning as a “whole,” or just a sum of their parts, the brightly-colored, hyper-textural objects attack themes of labor, domesticity, and the fine arts; in this instance, all are tied up in a comical, bug-like package. Philosopher Julien Offray de La Mettrie rejected dualism, the idea of a separation between body and soul, in favor of the soul as material, a notion that contemporary philosopher Ta-Nehisi Coates emphasizes in his book Between the World and Me. In this way, Harrington easily bridges the self, community, and the world at large. The artist’s “silly” assemblages reassert materiality and cut with a philosophical knife’s edge. They are well-assembled piles of junk, yet they are jumping-off points for inquiry, imbued with both their former function, as well as their future possibility. 

In the era of uncertain futures (though, fearing the unknown ahead may be the connective thread that ties us to all of human existence) it’s encouraging that thrown-away bits and lost or unsung ideas can be transformed into energetic, engaging outcomes. Within the materiality of each of Harrington’s gestural yet tightly-bound sculptures lies a pure essence of hope.

 

Mama’s Boy or an Inexplicable Reasoning is on view at La Mecha Contemporary in El Paso, Texas, through March 23, 2024.