It’s a rarity to witness an artist presenting two concurrent solo exhibitions and an even rarer occurrence when they are at the same time in the same city just down the street from each other, but this is why we can say Ry Rocklen breaks the mold in more ways than one. The synchronicity of these exhibitions, Shelf Life at Wilding Cran Gallery and Sand Box Living at Night Gallery, are rooted in Rocklen’s personal journey — a narrative of parenthood, relocation, and artistic rebirth — these exhibitions testify to Rocklen’s keen exploration of everyday landscapes and the objects that populate them.
Shelf Life and Sand Box Living emerge as thematic siblings, both grappling with the nuances of domesticity and solitude. In Shelf Life, Rocklen delves into the quotidian, elevating the mundane to the realm of the extraordinary. Paper towels and toilet paper, immortalized in ceramic form, evoke a sense of timelessness amidst the ephemeral. Meanwhile, just down the block, Sand Box Living delves into the desolate beauty of abandoned desert homesteads, offering a poignant meditation on isolation and resilience that lies in the vast expanse of the Mojave.
Central to Rocklen’s oeuvre is the marriage of everyday found objects and meticulously crafted ceramics — a union that blurs the lines between preservation and disposability. Through a process of transformation, Rocklen breathes new life into forgotten relics, imbuing them with a sense of permanence amidst the flux of time. Yet, beyond the materiality lies a deeper interrogation of consumer culture and the built environment. Rocklen’s work challenges viewers to reconsider their relationship with the objects surrounding them, inviting introspection amidst a landscape saturated with commodification. He asks us to reconsider our relationship with the material world through a masterful interplay of scale and perspective, prompting a deeper exploration of the stories embedded within the objects and spaces surrounding us.
I had the pleasure of interview Ry Rocklen about his two current shows:
Shelley: You have two concurrent exhibitions on view right now, down the street from each other, at Wilding Cran Gallery and Night Gallery. Was this planned? If so, why?
Ry Rocklen: Yes, very exciting to have the opportunity to show two shows at once with two great galleries. In February of 2020, our son was born. Then, when the pandemic started, we decided to move to Joshua Tree. As a result, I spent much of 2020–2022 child-rearing, moving, and setting up my new studios. Finally, toward the end of 2022, I started making work in earnest and began setting the wheels in motion to once again show in Los Angeles. In 2023, I had great meetings with Anthony Cran and Davida Nemeroff, and plans were hatched to have a proper solo show with Wilding Cran and then a special project show at Night Gallery alongside my dear friend Derek Boshier, who I had just shown at my gallery in Yucca Valley called Quality Coins. It had been five years since my last show in Los Angeles, so I had much to say!
SH: Both exhibitions, Shelf Life at Wilding Cran Gallery and Sand Box Living at Night Gallery, explore different aspects of everyday life and landscape. Can you discuss how these themes intersect and influence each other?
RR: Both shows deal with a pathological sense of domestic interiority. A sense of never leaving the house. A kind of landscape that can be found under a magnifying glass or found on the kitchen table. A stockpiled existence. In Sand Box Living, there is a kind of isolation found within the landscape of the desert, where people live to be away from one another, in a place to be alone. Then, in Shelf Life there is a familial isolation, a lockdown served together.
SH: Both exhibitions feature a combination of found objects and handmade ceramics. How do you navigate the relationship between these elements, particularly in conveying the narratives of disposable items?
RR: I have always felt like art is often an act of preservation, a practice of extending the life of things and ideas. The mediums used in my shows are particularly enduring and work to preserve the subject matter of the exhibitions. From the delicate patterns of the paper towels now cast in slip to the homesteads made out of clay to the crackers enlarged and cast in aluminum, these transformations all highlight the object’s relationship to time. The two sculptures titled Shelf Life in particular embody much of practice as they employ found objects (a series of ceramic heads I have found at thrift shops), the readymade (shelves from the big box store), and the fabricated objects (the ceramic bodies created for the found heads).
SH: Shelf Life highlights the beauty in everyday objects, while “Sand Box Living” delves into the history and resilience of abandoned desert homesteads. How do these opposing themes of preservation and disposability inform each other in your artistic practice? Has this always been something you’ve explored?
RR: My work has almost always been interested in exalting objects that have been cast away and taken for granted. That theme is very much present in Shelf Life with the paper product panels as toilet paper and paper towels have been rendered in clay along with the found ceramic heads that have been given bodies. The ceramic homesteads don’t fit quite as neatly into those categories, although I would say they are a type of found object that, through the work, I am preserving and remembering.
SH: Your work often challenges perceptions of value and veneration, whether through magnifying mass-produced products in Shelf Life or reinterpreting dilapidated cabins in Sand Box Living. Do you have a hope that viewers will reconsider their relationship with consumer culture and the built environment after experiencing both exhibitions?
RR: For me, as an artist, particularly as a sculptor, a major achievement is when an artwork alters the way the viewer sees the world after experiencing it. I really do hope that after seeing my exhibitions, the way people see the world is somehow affected, even if it is just how they relate to crackers, toilet paper, found ceramic heads, and abandoned homesteads.
SH: Can you discuss the role of scale and perspective in your work? What is the purpose?
RR: Sand Box Living plays with scale in both directions. I have taken bite-sized crackers and enlarged them to be the size of a painting or a pillow, while the homesteads have been shrunken down to be tabletop sculptures. In some ways, the homestead scale is a kind of spell, a pokémon effect to be shrunken down and collected. I knew I wanted to have an object inside the shrunken homesteads that would counteract their scale and remain actual size. When making cardboard mock-ups of the little homes I realized they looked like shoeboxes and loved the idea of a pair of ceramic shoes being within them. I also was thinking about how crackers had drifted into my life after having a kid and how scale shifts in relation to the person eating them, particularly the size of a cracker to a small child.
SH: Shelf Life and Sand Box Living invite viewers to reconsider the narratives embedded within the objects and structures surrounding us. How do you approach storytelling in your work, and what narratives do you hope to convey through these exhibitions?
RR: I love stories and storytelling, and although my work isn’t exactly narrative, it often tells the “story” of an object. The homestead’s stories are written in the broken roofs, chipped paint, loose tiles, and boarded-up windows. The passing of time can be seen embedded in the surface, structure, and contents of those homes. The basic narrative I want to convey through my work is that we are surrounded by complexity even in the most mundane of places.
SH: Can you discuss the significance of modularity and repetition in Shelf Life and how these themes carry over into Sand Box Living? How do these elements contribute to the overall narrative of each exhibition?
RR: Yes, modularity is a big part of the Shelf Life show. Both the figurative Shelf Life sculptures and the paper towel/toilet paper “Absorption Panels” are constructed by combining individually made components and tiles. Time almost always plays a central role in my work and is highlighted by the sculptures’ modularity.
With the tiled panels, there is the freezing of time by casting paper into ceramic and also a kind of index of labor in the repetition and careful placement of paper towels and toilet paper sheets turned into ceramic tile. I almost always think about time passing with mosaic works as time is so evident in the performance of their making, as the tiles act as an index of the time passing to make the piece.
A story about time can also be told in the modularity of the figurative Shelf Life sculptures, as there is a varied sense of time in which the piece was produced. Some of the found heads are from the 1970s and 80s while others have been left outside for a number of years, a sense of time that is also seen in the photographed surface of the homesteads.
SH: Both the exhibitionsevoke a sense of nostalgia, albeit in different ways — through the everyday objects of consumer culture and the abandoned homesteads of the Mojave Desert. Can you describe how nostalgia informs your artistic practice and the narratives you aim to convey through your exhibitions?
RR: One thing I think about in relation to nostalgia is how I have focused on the objects many of us have experience with, the real basics of American life. I think a lot of these “basics of American life” could be found in a “middle-class” home. That notion of the “middle class” in America can also be time-stamped to be somewhat prevalent from the 1950s through the 80s. I am not a scholar of the “middle class,” but I have seen with my own eyes how it has eroded significantly since I was alive. I think my work, in some ways, is a form of record-keeping and remembering.
SH: Lastly, what connections do you see between the environments of Los Angeles and the Mojave Desert in your work? How do these landscapes influence your artistic practice and the themes explored in your exhibitions?
RR: I think at this point I am still enjoying the differences between the landscapes of the Mojave Desert and Los Angeles and feel these two exhibitions in a lot of ways reflect the stillness and quietness of the desert from the perspective of someone who has lived in the city their entire life. I think there is a calmness to the work in both shows even though it is focused on the home and things found inside the home. I think there is a formal openness to the work in the exhibitions which is a quality I have become more familiar with while experiencing the landscape of the high desert.
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