Rural | Urban Artist | II
Till No 1, 2018
Automotive finish powder coated steel and Kansas chert
32 x 32 x 32 in
Price on request
Till No 1 incorporates visual vocabularies and archetypes stemming from the intersection of human and landscape. Domestication of land over time, depletion of wildness, and the formal objectivity left behind through the process of human living are underlying themes found throughout the piece. The work invites the viewer to consider the reciprocal relationship of human and landscape — what people and culture hold to be sacred, what is considered commodity, and the impact of time.
I grew up on a small family farm in Morning Sun, IA, surrounded by vast expanses of space, dense timberland, and the Mississippi River. This agrarian landscape played an important role in shaping me as an artist and designer — influencing the way I visually see, perceive and interact with my environment. This vernacular has also stimulated an obsession with scale — furthermore, how scale can be shifted and manipulated within 2-dimensional work, sculpture and architecture. After studying architecture I started a studio practice in downtown Des Moines, IA, where I currently work and reside — continuing visual investigations of landscape, material adjacency, space and time.
–Levi Robb
Levi Robb’s work explores the entanglement of person and context — time and atmosphere. With a focus on the formal objectivity of place, the work is influenced by human interface with environment, landscape, and artifact.
Through acts of printmaking, sculpture, installation and an interaction with locality the work emerges, a visual interpretation and record of an act in context. The emanation of the work embodies a dichotomy between permanent and impermanent objects and mark making. Human relationship with site based artifacts, and the interrelationship between the material and immaterial, are often common underlying themes throughout his work. Through the analysis, manipulation and reinterpretation of latent items and specific spatial conditions the work takes on a continual timeline with an inherent connection to the past. This process yields a unique body of formal objects that speak to cultural identity and concretize the idea of contemporary relics.
His work has been exhibited internationally and is in both public and private collections.
Robb earned a B.Arch at Iowa State University and has authored many articles in design and architecture publications. He recently participated in a residency program in Reykjavik, Iceland, and in the Tallgrass Artist Residency in the Flint Hills.
Robb presented a solo exhibit, Frenetic Pause, and an installation Frozen Charlotte, at The Volland Store in 2017.