Julian Hoeber @ Blum & Poe

Arrivals Hall Spiral, 2016

Object: Fiberglass reinforced uytracal with pigment, acrylic clear coat, micro tile, and spray lacquer

19 1/4 x 28 1/2 x 23 1/2 inches

Pedestal: Laminate sheeting, MDF, terrazzo

34 1/2 x 44 1/8 x 28 1/8 inches

Multipurpose Curved Wall Configuration, 1&2, 2016

Objects: Fiberglass reinforced uytracal with pigment, acrylic clear coat, and aluminum

17 1/2 x 35 7/8 x 6 1/2 inches and 17 1/2 x 35 7/8 x 9 1/4 inches

Pedestals: Walnut with lacquer and wax and mirror pane glass

38 1/2 x 42 x 16 inches each

Curtain Wall Vector Model, 2016

Plywood and basswood with acrylic, string, nails, and glue

Pink Tube, 2016

Object: Fiberglass reinforced uytracal with pigment, acrylic clear coat, and aluminum

31 5/8 x 31 x 22 1/2 inches

Pedestal: Laminate sheeting, MDF, terrazzo

34 5/8 x 40 1/8 x 40 1/8

Eye Pavilion/Aviary/Entry Hall, 2016

Object: Fiberglass reinforced uytracal with pigment, plexiglass, acrylic mirror, micro tile, grout, spray lacquer, aluminum and epoxy

 23 1/8 x 56 1/4 x 30 1/4

Pedestal: Laminate sheeting, MDF, terrazzo

31 1/4 x 68 1/8 x 42 1/4

Form Index 02, 2016

Materials variable

Installed dimensions variable

It's not unusual for an artist to hold meetings/visits in the context of his/her own gallery exhibition, especially on the last day of its showing.  Because of Hoeber being there (pictured in the background of one of the photographs above) and because of the eclectic, experimental feel of much of the work,  it felt more like an open studio than a coherent, realized exhibition.  So, it was through such a lens that I viewed the artworks themselves apparently mostly about optics as I gleaned from titles and visual forms.

All the showings I have seen of Hoeber's work in the past have been massive amounts of stuff in a wide variety of media that occupies massive amounts of space. (See Demon Hill, Execution Changes 17 (DS Q1 UMJ DC Q2 LMJ DC), Execution Changes 8-15, Execution Changes 21 (NS Q1 CJ LC), Execution Changes 16 (VS Q1 LMJ DC Q2 RMJ DC), His and Hers, Endless Chair, even more Execution Changes, Pipe Organ, Self-Consciousness Machine to list a few that dayoutlast has covered). Clearly, Hoeber has a lot to say, and is doing so.  

With this most current grouping we're a long ways from blown up heads cast in bronze (see All That is Solid Melts Into Air from 2008 at Blum & Poe), but certainly not  the abandonment of the interest in "the opening" which is to say the threshold between interior and exterior space, the mouth and other orifices, holes in the body as impressed upon me while viewing a video of his many years ago during a lecture.  The video involved the more violent and awkward sides of kissing, as one example. In light of this, what looked like a model for a performing arts center here in this show also looked like a an open mouth in need of dental work, or perhaps stylish dentures, or… an eye as the actual title suggests, Eye Pavilion/Aviary/Entry Hall (birds-eye-view?).  Whatever the case, it’s about occupying the area just below the surface of a bodily opening, let's call it the a liminal space to borrow language from the world of psychology, certainly a world that Hoeber occupies with much interest. What lies beneath the surface should not be ignored.

Two shelves of maquettes rang familiar on a personal level (a component of my own studio practice) as well as they conjured for me Patrick Hill's recent show, Drawings & Maquettes, at Susanne Hillberry.  Certainly, 3D models are no stranger to the practice of artists who work beyond two dimensions.  It's interesting to think about whether or not these are works of art or simply ephemeral support documents so to speak, in which case the entire exhibition feels like proposals, experiments, suggestions, and not so much completed objects with one fleshed out idea.  This exhibition was open, interesting, and fun in its lack of coherence. That said, idea itself as an idea prevailed.

Gallery as open studio, I believe is what was always intended for such shops, but now with an exhibition like this one, it actually feels even more like that rather than a showroom of commercial objects. That said, I'm assuming all of these objects in this show were still available for monetary consumption even if some were a little undercooked. Raw and al dente, for example, can also be good, right where the teeth meet (meat).  Whatever the case, it was important to think about how Hoebers’ work and vision now expands to propose artwork, more specifically sculpture, as architecture in its own right (not unlike an earlier work, Demon Hill, but now without such persona, introspective disorientation and so a more civic-minded one that is to say, public, more exterior than interior, externalized.  If one follows Hoeber's trajectory as I have since viewing All That is Solid Melts Into Air , then those bullet holes in the head or the heavy and prolonged kissing from the aforementioned student video--- both examples as intensely about inward affect of experience---are exchanged now for outward-looking effects, that is to say expression over impression, or to put it another way, a greater interest now in how things come out rather than go in. Good to think about (and not to forget its a two-way street).

To wit...

Julian Hoeber @ Blum & Poe

Patrick Hill @ Susann Hillberry

Justin Lowman @ Studio