Polyp #282-284 (2020)

Robert Anthony O’Halloran
Polyp #282-284
2020
gypsum cement, latex
approx. 8 x 8 x 3 inches
 
Polyps (2020) is a body of work delineated by process, performance and site-specificity serially cast in situ using Hydrostone and latex condoms. The available groupings were recently produced at Arsenal Contemporary (Toronto) as part of a group exhibition titled, ‘Crawling out of a hidden place’ (September 9-October 17th, 2020) curated by Anaïs Castro and David Liss. 
 
O’Halloran’s process-intensive, multi-sensory installations are informed by a cesspool of movements in the history of Modern Art: Dadaism, Fluxus, Arte Povera, Social Sculpture, Postminimalism, Site-Specific Art, Action Art, and Queer Art. Their approach to art-making is often thinly-veiled Auto-Obscurantism serially cast in cement and it is usually quite masochistic. A technician and mould-maker at heart, they perform endurance-based installations in situ, executing repetitive, laborious, and time-based actions using common casting materials to produce psycho spatial compositions. O’Halloran’s installations parallel the social organism in that they are dynamic micro-societies composed of manifold constituent parts. With an interest in psychosomatics, entanglements with intangibles, and the fraughtness of sociality in regard to both people and institutions, their recent works in visual art and writing explore social, sexual, and ecological health; HIV/AIDS; labour and commodity; the posthumanist body; and, our collective need for pleasure and mirth in light of calamity.