EDGAR ORLAINETA & NH DEPASS

The Tool In My Hand Is The Idea In My Head

March 30th - April 27th 2024

As humans we iterate an exercise against time: we accumulate objects, we collect and record stories and encapsulate them into personal and collective archives. This exercise culminated with the 16th century idea of Kunstkammer, translating into English as “cabinets of curiosities”, a way of organizing facts and ideas as stories in a real or imagined space, providing a rationale for arranging objects into a theater of memory. Cultural objects made by the human brain and hands have in fact long been the main source in providing valuable insight in understanding a culture's values, beliefs, and societal norms in a specific time and space. With the advancement of technology we then began placing them into folders, digital files, resulting in enormous digital archives.  Swivel Gallery is pleased to present “The Tool In My Hand Is The Idea In My Head”, a two-person exhibition featuring works by Edgar Orlaineta and NH DePass.

Hailing from different cultural and historical backgrounds, Edgar Orlaineta (b. 1972, Mexico City) and NH DePass (b. 1990, New Orleans) share between them a passion for crafting material chronicles that preserve stories and traditions, and simultaneously create new ones. Acting as both archaeologists and anthropologists of modern and contemporary culture, the two artists’ practices question today’s cultural and economic value of craftsmanship, recording and elaborating of both individual and collective data, formulated manually  and likewise technologically.

Working primarily with traditional woodcraft, Edgar Orlaineta has long explored the relationship between art, craft, and the industrial, at the intersection between sculpture and design. His hybrid sculptures are informed by a mild irony, allowing him to combine references to Modernism, history, literature, and pop culture, consistently intertwining amidst playful characters and biomorphic forms. Similarly in DePass’ carpentry work, the inspiration from mid-century modern design encounters eccentric imagery from nostalgic Americana culture. This results in both a critical and ironic commentary of the resulting superficially idiosyncratic aesthetic of consumerism and appropriation which eradicated boundaries between high and low cultural products, a substitution for something that can appeal to the taste of mass society. 

Blending craftsmanship with the accelerated rhythm of today's production, Orlaineta and DePass bend contemporary culture by dialectically combining classical carpentry and books with cutting-edge digital production and AI techniques. The results are nostalgic cultural “tableaux” or contemporary “cabinets de curiosités” which disrupt historical and cultural timelines while capturing and defining the intricacies of the “new” world.

Referencing both traditional symbologies and techniques of his homeland, and incorporates philosophical books that have informed the journey of the modern man, Orlaineta’s work acts as an attempt to protect traditions of objects-making. In his postmodern mashups the artist denounces the contradictory ideologies of restless evolution, while claiming a necessary legacy of cultural objects, just as anthropology reveals objects of a larger historical and cultural context.

DePass' new body of work, conversely, employs Artificial Intelligence as a tool, resulting in hours of back and forth between himself and the technology, which he likens to a process of revealing rather than generating. The results are uncanny oil paintings which are themselves a commentary on the digital-age disconnect with nature, and our often sanitized experience of it. These paintings are then placed within an elaborate framing system, inspired by mid-century design and California craftsman architecture. DePass’ practice of utilizing new technologies while referencing craftsmanship and design of bygone eras, jumps and compounds time. 

Both Orlaineta and DePass’ work ask us to hold regard, as well as question the notion of authorship and our relations to today’s technological advancement. The exhibition recalls what American author George Saunders once wrote, “...where there were no artifacts of previous cultures, no ancient ruins, just expedience-formed vistas. The old mill was now a Starbucks, and when the Starbucks kids went out for a smoke, they did so leaning against the fence of the pioneer graveyard…”. As our lives continuously shift online and we adapt to new ways of recording our lives and society, both artists’ practices remind us how hands are still the best direct extension of the brain to the physical world, as a direct and uninterrupted connection from an idea to a tangible object, channeling a synergy between the thinking body and hand into new cultural objects. 

BIO

Edgar Orlaineta (b.1972, Mexico City) lives and works in Mexico City. In his practice, Orlaineta focuses on hybrid sculptural forms that draw inspiration from modernism, popular culture, and specific historic moments. Orlaineta primarily explores post-war design and architecture that generally depicted biomorphic shapes owing to strong surrealist influence. His works have been presented in several shows both in Mexico and internationally, including most recently: Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City,Carbon 12 Gallery, Dubai, Wizard Gallery, Milan, La Tallera, Morelos, Mexico; Proyectos ArtBo, Bogotá; PROXYCO Gallery, New York;Galería de Arte Contemporáneo de Xalapa, Mexico;Steve Turner Contemporary, Mexico City;Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City;Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (MCA), Santa Barbara;Casa Estudio Luis Barragán, Mexico City; Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City;Museo de Arte Moderno (MAM), Mexico City; among the others. His work is held in prominent institutional collections, including: Caixa Forum, Barcelona; CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco; Colección Jumex, Mexico; Denver Art Museum, Denver; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, Washington; Kadist, Paris, France & San Francisco; Museo Amparo, Puebla; Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City

NH DePass (b.1990, New Orleans) is an artist from New Orleans, Louisiana. He holds an MFA in Sculpture from The Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY and a BA from The Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA. In his work there is disjuncture between old and new: a tension between craft and digital innovation. DePass uses classical techniques like hand sewing and carpentry while incorporating digital graphics and printing to create works that disturb historical and cultural timelines. In 2021, his work was featured in the solo exhibition Form Destroyer at Thierry Goldberg Gallery in New York City. He has exhibited in group exhibitions at The Pit, Los Angeles; Public Gallery, London; GYNP Gallery, Berlin; and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans. In 2021, he was awarded “1st” place in the Louisiana Contemporary exhibition at the Ogden Museum of Southern art.