September 17 - November 5, 2022
From Inman Gallery:
“Inman Gallery is pleased to present Robyn O’Neil: HELL and the Paradisal, on view in both gallery spaces September 17 – November 5, 2022. A conversation between Robyn and musician Damien Jurado will take place from 1- 2pm on Saturday, September 17 as part of our all-day open house, with the artist present until 4pm. In HELL and the Paradisal, O’Neil presents a body of new work which are reactions and responses to her epic 2011 drawing HELL (2011), which is installed in the south gallery. In the main gallery, a group of graphite on canvas works collectively titled The Paradise Fields, are accompanied by other recent graphite drawings on canvas and paper. Directly informed and inspired by the HELL triptych, the Paradisal works are a reflective exercise for O’Neil as she looks back on this monumental piece in the context of her present-day practice. There are several formal commonalities between HELL and the new works in the Paradisal: ferns growing from above, abstracted floating tree branches, dramatic cloud formations, shapes, and ghostlike enigmatic imagery. The tone, however, is entirely different. HELL is about death and destruction, while the Paradisal pieces are about growth, connection, beauty, thriving, nature, and calm, the latter the antidote to the former. In contrast to HELL, the Paradisal realm of the exhibition is distinctively earthly, centering nature, flora, and fauna as primary subject matter over human figures, with minimal, impressionistic landscapes interspersed between hyper-detailed compositions. Significantly smaller in scale, these new works are intimate and welcoming, a stark contrast to the grandeur and might of HELL. In addition to the three Paradisal Fields works, there are a number of works on paper with animal imagery and three, small-scale nocturne landscapes. Rendered in greyscale, O’Neil’s nocturne drawings mimic the artist’s early exposure to art history: as black and white reproductions in books and magazines at the library. Many works exist in sets of three because, as O’Neil points out, the Roman Catholic Church’s matins prayers are said at night and organized into three lessons. As with HELL, several art historical references are scattered throughout the exhibition, with homages to James Abbott McNeil Whistler’s Nocturne paintings, Albert Pinkham Ryder’s landscapes, and nineteenth-century botanical illustrations of Ernst Haeckel and Orra White Hitchcock, among others.”
Reception: September 17, 2022 | 7–9 pm
3901 Main Street
Houston, 77002 TX
(713) 526-7800
Get directions