May 22 - July 2, 2021
From Inman Gallery:
“Inman Gallery is pleased to present Robert Ruello: Angry Garden Salad, the seventh solo exhibition for the artist at Inman Gallery. The show will open Saturday, May 22, with an all-day open house, and the artist will be present from 12-2 pm. The exhibition features six new large-scale paintings, all completed in the past year. Houston-based writer Betsy Huete has contributed an essay about Ruello’s new body of work, and an excerpt from her text is below.
“Angry Garden Salad is a subtle yet staunch departure from Ruello’s previous work. It follows the same modus operandi he normally employs in that he uses technology as a starting point, deconstructing it into a set of formal, painterly engagements. However, this grouping feels vastly more contemplative, introverted, stark, saturated, and quietly gut-wrenching. Also of note: the pieces may be quieter, but they’re curiously as, if not more, loquacious than ever before. But the chatter is more self-directed and internally devoted this time—more of a mutter—shards of text and fractured information churning in on itself to the point of oblivion.
“This simultaneity of creation and destruction has been omnipresent in Ruello’s work: he’s always explored the deconstructing of a digital image and reifying it into a formally dynamic object. This time, however, Ruello’s obliterative impulse is more multi-directional, its tendrils feeling more precarious and pervasive. With Angry Garden Salad, Ruello’s classic push/pull extends beyond the technological into a garbled, sensorial conversation between modernism and postmodernism, between language as a carrier of content versus an obliterative tool for formal play and discovery.”
Robert Ruello (born 1958, New Orleans, LA) received a BA in Psychology from Loyola University, New Orleans, LA (1982), a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1987), and an MFA from Columbia University (1997). From 1987-89 he was an artist-in-residence at the Core Program, Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX. His work has been shown regionally in group and solo exhibitions, most recently at the Galveston Artist Residency, Galveston, TX. In 2015, the Galveston Art Center hosted a survey exhibition of work from 1991-2014. Most recently the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston acquired a signature early painting by Ruello, through the generosity of Victoria Lightman.”
On View: May 22, 2021 | 11 am – 6 pm
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3901 Main Street
Houston, 77002 TX
(713) 526-7800
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