SAINT LOUIS, MO.- Laumeier Sculpture Park presents Roberley Bell: Inside Out, an exhibition that explores the relationship between the man-made and the natural with a focus on the artifice of nature. Opening October 9 and continuing through January 10, 2010, Bell ’s colorful and intricate sculptures will enliven the Park’s indoor galleries with a survey of her recent work including the Flower Blobs, the Wonder Series, and new indoor sculpture. A full-color publication with an essay will accompany the exhibition.
Bell's Flower Blobs sculpture series is strongly inspired by Blob Architecture — a term for a particular kind of biomorphic architecture coined by architect Greg Lynn in 1995. The artist’s forms in this body of work are not, in fact, drawn from nature though they clearly seem to declare themselves as natural forms. The Flower Blobs continue to explore the spills of the artist’s earlier landscape projects and the space where the artificial meets the real. According to the artist, “The Flower Blobs become a miniature version if not a souvenir of our extreme control of the landscape.”
The artist’s more recent Wonder Series is inspired by the wunder & kunst-kammers — unique museums and collections of the 17th century when contemporary categorical boundaries had yet to be defined. These works are a series of miniature worlds. The curious collections of flora and fauna continue Bell ’s play on and off the real.
“When I look at Bell ’s work I see a thoughtful, playful flux as the backbone of the work,” said Kim Humphries, Laumeier’s Director of Exhibitions and Collections. “With the Flower Blobs she has essentially conflated the already conflated Blob Architecture. The ideas are all marvelously yet decisively mixed up! Coincidentally, a sea of other “C” words has come to mind when thinking about Bell ’s artistic practice - coalesce, combine and commingle are all relevant with Bell ’s marvelous sculpture and installations.”
Roberley Bell spent her childhood in Latin America and Southeast Asia, before returning to the United States to attend the University of Massachusetts and State University of New York at Alfred where she received an MFA in Sculpture. Bell is the recipient of many grants and fellowships including two from the New York Foundation for the Arts, a Pollock Krasner Fellowship, a Fulbright to the Netherlands and several residency awards. Bell was recently selected a Fulbright scholar for the second time. She’ll spend the spring of 2010 in Turkey .
Bell's work has been exhibited in a multitude of solo and group exhibitions, nationally and internationally. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Pentimenti Gallery, Philadelphia; the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow; Dieu Donne Gallery, New York; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; Fassbender-Stevens Gallery, Chicago; Black and White Gallery, Brooklyn; Paul Petro Gallery, Toronto among others. Bell has completed public site projects in Pittsburgh , Baltimore and New York . Bell is represented by Pentimenti Gallery of Philadelphia.
The exhibition will open to the public at 6:00 p.m. on Friday, October 9, 2009. The free artist’s reception will end at 8:00 p.m. with the exhibition continuing through January 10, 2010 during regular museum hours.
