MARFA –– RULE Gallery is delighted to present a two-person exhibition, The Unusual Suspects, featuring paintings on paper by Joe Clower and small-scale sculptures by Amber Cobb after a well-received run at RULE’s Denver location. The exhibition will open in Marfa on April 10, and will be on view through June 15, 2024. The gallery will host a public reception on Friday, April 12, from 6 to 8 pm.
Though distinctly individual in their approach to material, both artists are tied together by their interest in biomorphic, hybrid forms whose appearance can be understood as futuristic, otherworldly, playful, or even scheming.
While Clower’s stark, hard-edged mechanistic forms reveal enigmatic narratives of a modern industrialized and depersonalized world, Cobb’s intimately scaled works are faintly discernible as once functional objects melded into one another, playfully reemerging with protrusions, a bit more swollen and stretched. Both artists draw us into a peculiar physical and psychological reality, leaving us to decode the hidden messages amongst rich hues, wry humor, and strangely elusive forms. The exhibition acts as an invitation to examine the complexity that materializes when the bizarrely outlandish and the strangely mundane collide with the human psyche’s awkward yet often beautiful depths.
Joe Clower lives and works in Denver, Colorado. He received his BFA in 1963 from the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, and his MFA in 1967 from the University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado. While at CU Boulder he became connected with many of Colorado’s new wave of artists as a member of Boulder’s Armory Group and later the Criss-Cross artist co-operative. Clower has exhibited his work nationally since 1964, including exhibitions in New York City, Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, Seattle and throughout Colorado. His museum exhibitions include the Denver Art Museum, MCA/Denver, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Kansas City Art Institute, Whitney Museum of American Art, Center on Contemporary Art Seattle, The Harwood Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Alaska State Museum, in addition to numerous University institutions around the country. His work is in the public collection of The Art Institute of Chicago, The Eli and Edythe Broad Collection, the National Gallery of Australia, Security Pacific Bank, and Warner Brothers Records along with many private collections.
Amber Cobb is an American artist living and working in Denver, Colorado. Her practice explores the physical and psychological response to conflicts and contradictions. Starting with the body as a point of departure, her work blurs the boundaries between abjection, attraction and humor. Cobb received her M.F.A. in sculpture from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2011. Since then, her work has been exhibited in institutions both nationally and internationally and featured in the Cambridge Scholars Publishing, the New York Times, Frieze, and Sculpture Magazine. Selected exhibitions include Palatable Relations at Hilario Galgura, Mexico City; The Dreamers Dilemma at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art Boulder, Colorado; Turn the Page at Daniela Elbahara Galeria, Mexico City; Negotiating Spaces at David B. Smith Gallery, Denver; and Breakthroughs at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver. Cobb is represented by Daniela Elbahara Galeria in Mexico City.
For more information, visit http://www.rulegallery.com/