First Solo Exhibition by Yoram Wolberge at Benrimon Contemporary
NEW YORK, NY.- Benrimon Contemporary presents the first solo exhibition of San Francisco based artist, Yoram Wolberger. The show consists of works from his Cowboys & Indians series, including two life size cowboy sculptures, one life size Indian sculpture, and the full set of related prints.
Wolberger’s art manipulates and challenges perceptions of the familiar through a variety of sculptural interventions. He often chooses to work with everyday, culturally iconic, objects to which we attach deep-seated and often unconscious meanings. Transformed beyond their original context, these objects suggest new associations and provoke fresh insights into their larger societal relevance and influence.
Cowboys & Indians is based on the widely familiar toy figurines with which Wolberger played during his youth, and invites viewers to consider the manufacturing of common cultural stereotypes. Faithfully reproducing the seemingly innocent figurines at life size proportions with all their original design “flaws” intact, the artist compels us to reexamine the cultural attitudes implied by such distorted portrayals.
Cowboys & Indians is based on the widely familiar toy figurines with which Wolberger played during his youth
Color prints of blue Cowboy and red Indian sculptures are located at the front of the gallery, offering four detailed views of each vividly colored figurine in an otherwise starkly technical context. The prints introduce the ironically sophisticated process of reproducing such “imperfect” and mundane icons through precision 3D digital enlargement.
The sculptures themselves occupy the back area of the gallery, arranged in an arresting mock-battle scene. Life size and looming, the sculptures appear at once more realistic than their dime-store counterparts and also more absurd. Now highly visible, the prominent manufacturing defects undermine the figures’ heroic poses, frozen in their glory with flattened heads and disproportionate bodies.
Yoram Wolberger lives and works in San Francisco. He received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and was a recipient of the Murphy Fine Arts and the Schmidt Family Foundation Fellowships. His work is part of the permanent collections of the Orange County Museum of Art, CA; 21C Museum, KY; Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, CA and Brooklyn Museum, NY.
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