Wayne Gilbert: The End of The Road
Bill Arning Exhibitions is proud to present
Wayne Gilbert: The End of The Road at The Outsider Art Fair, March 3-6, 2022
The Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 W.18th street New York, NY 10011.
Artist talk in the booth with Nick Flynn Friday March 4th, 6PM
Wayne Gilbert came to painting later in life and was frustrated by artworks that intended to deal with life and death issues merely depicting those hard topics. Why don’t we just use the actual substance of life and death, human remains, he asked. These remains contain many stories but tell none. Gilbert encourages the viewer to contemplate the nature of death itself, the life-death cycle, and how we have come to terms with our mortality. The primal moments and learning everyone will die and we will not escape that fate is replayed in from of every work by Gilbert, sometimes with a laugh along with the tears.
The ash and bone lend a sense of gravitas to Gilbert’s work creating unmistakable texture. The earth-tone variations are the final result of the cremation process. The remains, a literal memento mori replaces representations of the skull as an emblem of mortality and remind the viewer of its omnipresence amidst the sumptuous trappings of the good life. The Catholic Church venerated the mortal remains of saints: ornate reliquaries can be found in churches and cathedrals the world over. Each one contains human remains — bones, organs, or entire bodies that have miraculously laid undecayed for centuries. While the remains are not “art” in themselves, they are objects of veneration that speak to the ultimate destiny of all flesh – ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Gilbert’s paintings are crafted from such ashes, making his chosen medium itself a powerful message of memento mori.
Gilbert balances out his choice of media with witty, tongue-in-cheek compositions and titles. The intention behind the work is the acceptance and normalization of death as a natural part of the cycle of life. In the United States, the subject of death is met with fear and dread. In Mexico, deceased loved ones are remembered on Dia de Los Muertos – the iconography of mortality is combined with a celebratory mood of the holiday. Ancestors are consulted with shrines in Asia. There are now many options for recycling one’s remains: eco-funerals that place the unembalmed body into the active soil layer, the manufacturing of artificial diamonds from cremated remains and jettisoning remains out into space.
Wayne Gilbert’s paintings allow the viewer to contemplate death without the veil of mystery and dread that instills fear of the unknown into most Westerners. The work encourages us to find comfort in death as part of the life cycle and to know that we can always be useful, even after we pass on.
About Wayne Gilbert
Wayne Gilbert (b. 1947) has an undergraduate degree from the University of Houston in Painting, and a Master’s from Rice University. He was a founding member of the Rubber Group from 1996 until 2004’s. In 2001 Wayne founded the 101 Space in downtown Houston, above the Massage School on Washington Blvd where he presented new and eclectic exhibitions until 2007 when he opened Ggallery.
Wayne has had many solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. He has been a guest speaker at Bard College, Annandale on the Hudson, New York, Rutgers University, New Jersey, and Texas Tech, Lubbock, Texas. He has curated exhibitions in Trujillo, Peru, Santiago, Cuba, Salzwedel, Germany, Seattle, Washington, Marfa, Texas, Arlington, Texas to name a few.
About Bill Arning
Bill Arning is a contemporary art advisor, curator, and critic based in Houston, Texas. From 2009 to 2018 he was the director of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Since arriving at CAMH in 2009, he has organized solo exhibitions on Mark Flood, Melanie Smith, Matthew Day Jackson, and the late Stan VanDerBeek. In 2015, along with curator Elissa Auther and the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, he co-organized the survey show Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty. In 2018 Arning co-curated a Cheryl Donegan exhibition with Heidi Zuckerman of the Aspen Arts Museum.
In 2020-21 Bill Arning presented a full Mary Weatherford retrospective with Ian Berry of the Tang Museum entitled Mary Weatherford: Canyon-Daisy-Eden which traveled to Site Santa Fe in summer 2021. Recent commercial gallery exhibitions include Texas Extravagant Drawing at Fiendish Plots, Lincoln, Nebraska, Paulina Peavy/Lacamo: They Call us Unidentified with Andrew Edlin Gallery, Dirty Words-Mark Flood/Sam Jablon at Mindy Solomon Gallery, Miami. In Houston Arning curated Extravagant Drawing ReDo at G Spot Gallery and No Trigger Warnings at Bill Arning Exhibitions at Flatlands Gallery.
In 2020 Arning opened Bill Arning Exhibitions in Houston and has presented solo exhibitions by under-recognized subversive artists like Michael St John, Chuck Nanney, Zachari Logan, Enoc Perez, and the infamous Michael Tracy, his most comprehensive survey since his MoMA/PS1 retrospective. He has also championed Texas artists like Christopher Cascio, Lovie Olivia, and Preetika Rajgariah.
Previously, Arning was curator at MIT’s List Visual Arts Center (2000–2009), curating shows on AA Bronson, Cerith Wyn Evans, and Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler. From 1985 to 1996, Arning was director of White Columns in New York, where he organized groundbreaking first solo shows for artists such as John Currin, Marilyn Minter, Andres Serrano, Richard Phillips, Cady Noland, and Jim Hodges.
His writing has appeared in Artforum, Apollo, Art in America, Out, Gulf Coast, and Parkett, and he has contributed to many international publications, including exhibition catalogues on Keith Haring, Christian Jankowski, and Donald Moffett. He writes a monthly column on LBBTQ art issues for OutSmart Magazine, the gay magazine covering Houston, Texas.
ABOUT NICK FLYNN
Nick Flynn’s most recent book, The Reenactments, which Kirkus calls “a truly insightful, original work,” completes a trilogy begun with AnotherBullshit Night in Suck City (2004). His previous book, The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands (2011), is a collection of poems linked to the second book of the trilogy, The Ticking is the Bomb (2010), which the Los Angeles Times called a “disquieting masterpiece.” Another Bullshit Night in Suck City won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award, was shortlisted for France’s Prix Femina, and has been translated into fifteen languages. He is also the author of a play, Alice Invents a Little Game and Alice Always Wins (2008), as well as two other books of poetry, Some Ether (2000), and Blind Huber(2002), for which he received fellowships from, among other organizations, The Guggenheim Foundation and The Library of Congress. Some of the venues his poems, essays and non-fiction have appeared in include The New Yorker, the Paris Review, National Public Radio’s This American Life, and The New York Times Book Review. His film credits include artistic collaborator and “field poet” on the film Darwin’s Nightmare (nominated for an Academy Award for best feature documentary in 2006), as well as executive producer and artistic collaborator on Being Flynn, the film version of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City (2012, Focus Features, directed by Paul Weitz, starring Robert De Niro, Paul Dano, Julianne Moore, and Lili Taylor). A professor in the creative writing program at the University of Houston, where he teaches each spring, he then spends the rest of the year in (or near) Brooklyn.
For press inquiries or to schedule an interview with the artist, please contact M. Charlene Stevens at stevensmcharlene@gmail.com