Des Moines Art Center Opens Dario Robleto Survival Does Not Lie In The Heavens
Survival Does Not Lie In The Heavens, open September 23, 2011 — January 15, 2012, is devoted to Dario Robleto’s recent exploration of longevity and extinction.
The San Antonio-native is well known for using ephemeral and archaic materials, including vinyl records, dinosaur fossils, impact glass formed by meteorites, human tears, and heartbeats to create poetic statements that celebrate our faith in the materials and objects that shape our lives. Influenced by both conceptual art and popular forms of music sampling, Robleto mixes these materials in order to understand the present through the past in an ongoing pursuit of a collective desire for chance, hope, and immortality. Faith is an important underlying theme in Robleto’s work and is exemplified in the diversity of materials and ideas that he uses to create his artwork. Survival Does Not Lie in The Heavens features 13 large-scale two- and three-dimensional works addressing various natural phenomena including the extinction of animal species, glacial ice melts, and human super centenarians. Robleto’s exhibition will also feature a new, site-specific piece entitled Candles Un-burn, Suns Un-shine, Death Un-dies (2011). This piece unites Robleto’s ongoing interest in legendary musical performers such as Patsy Cline and Buddy Holly, who died prematurely, and his ongoing exploration of immortality.
This exhibition will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalog edited by Art Center
Senior Curator Gilbert Vicario, and featuring essays by Vicario, along with Michelle White, associate curator, The Menil Collection, Houston; and Naomi Oreskes, science historian and author of “Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming” (2010).
Image: Dario Robleto (American, born 1972) (detail)
Some Longings Survive Death, 2008
Glacially released 50,000-year old woolly mammoth tusks, 19th-century braided hair flowers of various lovers intertwined with glacially released woolly mammoth hair, carved ivory and bone, bocote, colored paper, silk, ribbon, typeset
57 x 8 x 53 inches
Courtesy of the artist and ACME, Los Angeles, CA
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