Rochelle Botello’s recent work continues her quest to be an uncompromising formalist who takes the stuffiness and rigidity out of the “art for art’s sake” approach. Her superpower is a talent to render whimsy and make it no less serious than any other grand philosophical foray into the meaning of things.
Refreshingly free of theoretical pretense, her work presents a genius for the delicate sense of rendering existence itself. Consider the relationship the lifespan of consciousness has between the floor and the ceiling, between the climax and the residue, between potential and exhalation. Can anyone point to the day that it all began for them, or that it all fell apart? Narrative implies it all happens in a linear fashion but life delivers ups and downs simultaneously. When we remove convenient narrative every story is all over the place. Botello shows us the poetry of existence absent trajectory.
Her sculptures in the FREE FALL exhibit utilize color as a way to mark the space between consistency and overload. Each sculpture is dominated by a single color and contains a passage where a cacophony of chroma explodes. Each of the three floor sculptures along with one large wall piece has this spackle of hues in a different location, up or down, compressed or elongated, all with the sense that there are brief shining, sparkly moments amidst the wild stretches of wonder we call life.
The exhibit also contains framed works on paper exploring similar themes and constructs. A large grid of these uniformly-sized drawings serves to hold in the explosiveness of each abstracted composition. If anything, the drawings underscore just how refined and complete the sculptures in the show are. These raw pictures are sketches of energy while the sculptures in FREE FALL are resolved, elegant affirmations that chaos and wonder are there to be embraced. The three dimensional pieces are human-sized without being human-shaped and are constructed of colored tape wrapped upon wire with other swatches of tape added here and there. They are dramatic meditations on the simultaneity of ups and downs, asserting what art can be when we free it to be itself.
FREE FALL is a solo show of recent work by Rochelle Botello at the Bakersfield Museum of Art on display thru September 7. A similar presentation of this work appeared previously at the Torrance Art Museum.
