Inman Gallery is pleased to present Robert Ruello: Angry Garden Salad, the seventh solo exhibition for the artist at Inman Gallery since 1992. The show will include six new large-scale paintings, all completed in the past year. The exhibition will open Saturday, May 22, with an all-day open house; the artist will be present from 12-2pm. 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.
Angry Garden Salad remains on view at Inman Gallery through Friday, July 2, 2021.
