RY ROCKLEN

In the Mojave’s tan expanses, sanctity is constantly in view. Resilience strategies for enduring the daily news are embedded in real weather’s wear and tear. Art that observes and addresses this is political poetry. Ry Rocklen’s indexical sculptures remind me that shacks, sneakers, and snack crackers—like fossils embossed with geological strata—are occult clues that point to shelter from overexposure. Whether his symbolic lexicon is apocryphal or sage is up for debate. These artworks, like the desert they celebrate, properly disorient viewers before any conceptual quest can begin.

The clay sculptures throughout Sand Box Living were inspired by photographic ‘templates’ Rocklen takes of the dilapidated jackrabbit homesteads erected during the Small Tract Era’s legacy of land theft. United States citizens who erected 400-square-foot cabins on five-acre parcels claimed land ownership, illegally overriding tribal rights. While many are now refurbished, some lots languish as disintegrated souvenirs of property dispute. As mid-century ruins, their wood and concrete skeletons are irresistibly haunted, so Rocklen has transformed his architectural fascination into shoebox-like, tabletop miniatures featuring hallucinatory scale shifts and subversive trompe l’oeil that elicit formal questions about perspective and space.

Eavesdropping through the teeny windows as one does through their desert cinderblock counterparts, treasures appear: Instead of woodrat middens, graffiti, snakes, shot-up rusty cans, and disintegrated curtains flapping in wind, we find Reebok replicas ensconced in découpage. These cast and carved trainers are super cozy and honorifically housed in art-adorned domiciles, but they’re also paradoxically morbid, recalling reliquary and cult fetish. While the hand-built, clay-slab boxes that contain the shoes are compositionally packed, they encapsulate and deliver into the gallery the same vast solitude that desert fans love: There’s an ironic slippage between the compact homestead cabin structures and the vast lands they failed to claim. This incongruity breeds an uncanny loneliness that can be charming and dollhouse-like. But just when these sculptures lean towards model or diorama, they steer viewers back towards eternity through earthy, neutrally colored clay bodies and topography reminiscent of the Mojave’s rocky outcroppings.

This body of work furthers Rocklen’s longstanding preoccupations with how American culture selects and produces iconography. How and why are some objects elevated to elite status? Who decides, and are their shapes and forms fixed? Are fabricated duplicates as precious as originals? Rocklen is a minimalist Sherlock Holmes of sorts, sniffing out the elusive champion-status inherent to plastic trophies, bathroom tiles, school lockers, and paper towels. His interests are wide-ranging, spanning high kitsch to humble, functional tools. But these sculptures are the first, he says, in which his desert home landscapes have permeated his aesthetics. For example, that these sculptures are emblazoned with decals made from 3D photo-printing ceramic glaze is a stark reminder that our perceptions about sublimity’s simplicity are erroneous. Just as wilderness evidences weather’s complex technical achievements, Rocklen’s homestead series makes deceptive light of highly skilled craft moves and dexterous material construction.

— Trinie Dalton

Press release courtesy Night Gallery