John Orth
September 12, 2017 – October 18, 2017
John Orth’s work offers the urgency of human gesture against a backdrop of inevitable evanescence and mystery. His sculptural work fuses organic and inorganic materials to create a hybridized world of sensuous artifice, in which the bright orange of a tangerine and an extension cord share a complex root system. These pieces invite the viewer to imagine squeezing, smelling, stroking them, yet they maintain the formal reserve of the catalogued and preserved. A shared visual language ripples across the surface of all participants, human and otherwise, as evidence of this exchange.
Orth is an artist and musician living and working in New York City. He recently received an MFA in sculpture at Virginia Commonwealth University. He was a fellow at Mildred’s Lane (PA), Wayfarer’s (NY) and SOMA (CDMX). He is a recent recipient of The Dedalus Foundation grant for outstanding MFA students. John is a founding member of the band Holopaw who released two recordings on Sub Pop Records. He is also a contributing member of Isaac Brock’s solo project, Ugly Casanova. He was co-founder of F.L.A. Gallery in Gainesville, Florida in 2012. His artistic pursuits have included collaborations with experimental filmmakers Roger Beebe, Alan Calpe, and Adam Baran. He is represented by Cinders Gallery in New York.
“The summer after receiving an MFA in sculpture at Virginia Commonwealth University, I was invited to be an artist-in-residence at Tempus Projects. The residency gave me the time to decompress after grad school, and to test new ideas outside the halls of academia. I am thankful for Tempus Projects for affording me the next step beyond school and for investing in my practice. The experience was invaluable.”
