dario robleto nurses needed now 2006 33 1/2 x 26 x 6 inches 85.1 x 66 x 15.2 cm framed: 41 1/4 x 34 1/4 x 9 inches 104.8 x 87 x 22.9 cm
homemade paper (pulp made from soldier's letters home from various wars, ink retrieved from letters, cotton), colored paper, thread and fabric from soldier's uniforms from various wars, WWI gauze bandage, braided hair, crepe, cast military medal, needles, ribbon, colored pencil, pen, foam core.
via d'amelio-terras.com
i saw this dario robleto piece at the slash: paper under the knife exhibit at the museum of arts and design. it's a piece that would seem easy to overlook as "cutesy" but i stopped long enough to read this line: "when your heart strings break, i will mend them."
i became interested in the materials that he assembled--some were real remnants from people's lives, war-torn lives. the concept and culture of mourning, "the nature of belief, faith, and doubt in relation to loss and materials" are central to much of robleto's work:
“across history and cultures, the mourning process has left behind some remarkably original and novel forms of thinking...there is a creative potential to loss that is distinctly human and a key to understanding humanness itself. will this unparalleled level of loss propel us as a whole into completely new ways of thinking?” - dario robleto, via the houston chronicle
***
he considers himself a "materialist poet"--i don't know exactly what that means (creating a visual poem out of lost and found materials?), but i like how it sounds... the titles of his works suggest a poetic sensibility: time measures nothing but this love; daughters of wounds and relics; a century of november; no one has a monopoly over sorrow; fear and tenderness in men / a color god never made.
have a look at this slideshow and note the materials that he assembles. do think it's fascinating? or a bit precious? morbid? plain weird?
***
mr. robleto's work was also featured on the cover of a recent yo la tengo album:
i became interested in the materials that he assembled--some were real remnants from people's lives, war-torn lives. the concept and culture of mourning, "the nature of belief, faith, and doubt in relation to loss and materials" are central to much of robleto's work:
“across history and cultures, the mourning process has left behind some remarkably original and novel forms of thinking...there is a creative potential to loss that is distinctly human and a key to understanding humanness itself. will this unparalleled level of loss propel us as a whole into completely new ways of thinking?” - dario robleto, via the houston chronicle
***
he considers himself a "materialist poet"--i don't know exactly what that means (creating a visual poem out of lost and found materials?), but i like how it sounds... the titles of his works suggest a poetic sensibility: time measures nothing but this love; daughters of wounds and relics; a century of november; no one has a monopoly over sorrow; fear and tenderness in men / a color god never made.
have a look at this slideshow and note the materials that he assembles. do think it's fascinating? or a bit precious? morbid? plain weird?
***
mr. robleto's work was also featured on the cover of a recent yo la tengo album:
at war with the entropy of nature / ghosts don't always want to come back 2002 (this is no mere cassette picked from someone's garage or a local flea market...)
cassette: carved bone and bone dust from every bone in the body, trinitite (glass produced during the first atomic test explosion, from trinity test site, c. 1945, when heat from blast melted surrounding sand), metal screws, rust, typeset
audiotape: an original composition of military drum marches, various weapon fire, and soldiers' voices from battlefields of various wars made from e.v.p. recordings (electronic voice phenomena: voices and sounds of the dead or past, detected through magnetic audiotape)
