Robert Loebell

Lives and works in Bloomfield, CT, USA

Artist statement

Photographs are flat representations of the three-dimensional world. They freeze a moment in time, and capture a specific place, activity, person or group. In my relief carvings, I return black and white photographs to three dimensions. These sculptures reference home, travel, responses to events, and the frozen moments I’ve captured moving through environments not my own. In a two step process, I begin by taking hundreds of pictures and then curating them into a story in an image or a series of images, or by researching images in an artists archive. They are then returned to three dimensions in carvings. The pieces are carved, burned and painted to suggest their sources- black and white or color photographs- but they are not reproductions. Through this transformation, the photographs become more abstract. They are softer edged, and become more like memories than totally specific, decipherable events. Even in the most recent, more topical pieces, I have tried to suggest a more universal meaning. The sculptures reimagine the fixity or flexibility of time by swapping the original medium for wood, and then recreating the images themselves into a new form.

Artwork