For Art Basel’s OVR: Portals, Thierry Goldberg Gallery is pleased to present a selection of
new works by David Shrobe.
Using found materials sourced in part from his neighborhood, David
Shrobe layers architectural objects, scraps of furniture, fabric, and discarded
frame molding to create his multilayered paintings. What manifests are figures
assembled by signaled body parts. Fragments depict each figure to offer an
uncanny outline that nonetheless exerts a presence of being.
The works presented in OVR: Portals showcase Shrobe’s expanded practice of incorporating found
materials in strange and inventive ways that challenge the viewing experience
and provide a glimpse into the artist’s imagined universe. Shrobe employs a
process of layering to both embody the figure and frame his subjects, and as a
way to communicate the complexities of the human experience. The artist uses
the folkloric language of flight drawn from diasporic traditions as a dynamic
mode of being with contemplative moments of self-discovery.
Shrobe sees the past year and its civil unrest as a moment of
reflection. Wide Blue Wings (2021) evokes the artist’s distrust in prescribed historical
narratives. Using the reverse side of an antique reproduction of a Madonna and
child painting, the work depicts a futuristic African American angelic being
wearing an Astronaut helmet with wings visible. Shrobe drew inspiration for
this figure from a character in Toni Morrison’s novel, Song of Solomon, who dons silk blue wings and
a flight suit in his attempt to soar off a rooftop.
In Earthbound (2021), a figure in an armored body suit floats in the solitude
of a post-apocalyptic world, where a fallen confederate monument lays toppled
and covered in moss, a leftover artifact from a distant past. The figure’s gaze
both confronts and looks out beyond a world we can readily see, emphasizing the
artist’s exploration of the universe and where we fit within it.
Vessel (2021) continues the artist’s use of found materials to explore ideas of
lineage and inheritance. Shrobe transforms the remains of a church pulpit into
framing for a drawing of a father and child, suggesting a self-portrait of the
artist and his daughter. Their faces are intermingled and they share the same
body, denoting the ways in which traditions and knowledge are passed down
through generations.
David Shrobe (b.1974,
New York, NY) lives and works in New York. He holds an MFA and a BFA in
Painting from Hunter College. Shrobe’s work is currently on view in The
Slipstream: Reflection, Resilience, and Resistance in the Art of Our Time at the
Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, and in Lineages: Works from the Collection at NSU
Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, FL. Shrobe has had recent solo exhibitions at
Steve Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Thierry Goldberg Gallery, New York, NY;
and Jenkins Johnson Gallery, San Francisco, CA. He has participated in group
exhibitions at CFHILL Art Space, Stockholm, Sweden; Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, Los
Angeles, CA and New York, NY; Mandeville Gallery at Union College, Schenectady,
NY; the Bronx Museum, Bronx, NY; and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY.
Shrobe’s work is held in the Permanent Collections of The Brooklyn Museum,
Brooklyn, NY; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; The Block Museum,
Evanston, IL; Union College, Schenectady, NY; Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at
the University of Oregon, Eugene, OR; and NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, FL.