Oliver Bell's 'One Man’s Dumpster Is Another Man’s Garden' communicates personal stories of love, loss

TAOS — In Oliver Bell’s solo exhibition, “One Man’s Dumpster Is Another Man’s Garden,” at Revolt Gallery, the artist repurposes the disused scraps of vacuum-coated aluminum foil from his father, Larry Bell’s, studio practice to make intimately scaled, deeply personal works.

Larry Bell, an internationally renowned artist who lives and works in Taos, came to the May 16 opening reception. His first words to his son, after they hugged, were “How are you holding up?”

It’s been a very difficult year for the Bell family.

Oliver Bell’s mother, Janet Webb Bell — Larry Bell’s wife — died unexpectedly in June, just weeks after being diagnosed with cancer. The main room of Revolt serves as a memorial to her, with many crumpled, concave aluminum discs representing morning glories, her favorite flower.

Oliver Bell’s discs are highly abstract and less recognizable as flowers than the crepe paper ones I made for my high school homecoming float, or the fabric poppies that American Legion members hand out on Memorial Day. But mimesis is not the point. In fact, their emotional power arises precisely from their half-formed quality or ontological thinness. Like Samuel Beckett’s pitiable characters who seem even more human because of the paucity of language he uses to describe them, Bell’s crumpled abstractions are pathos personified.

I am reminded of a line from Beckett’s prose piece, “Lessness,” which he composed by drawing words out of a hat: “Ash gray little body only upright heart beating face to endlessness.”

Larry Bell’s “endless” mirrored surfaces feel more “ash gray” and mortal in his son’s reinterpretations. The work is less spellbinding than his father’s, but more human.

In some of Oliver Bell’s larger morning glory collage pieces, he puts cut-out faces from family photos in the center of the flowers, where the pistil and pollen would be. The scrapbook feel of these pieces is reminiscent of works like “Bouquet of Eyes” by collage pioneer Hannah Höch, but, whereas Höch used impersonal images from newspapers and magazines to critique society, Bell uses private family photos to plumb his own psychology.

In Revolt’s smaller gallery, Bell has installed a number of pieces dedicated to his father. While his mother was represented by morning glories, his father, who is known for his cube-shaped sculptures, is represented by flattened or unfolded nets of cubes. These shapes are rigidly geometric, but they resemble human figures with square heads, arms, and legs — like Joel Shapiro sculptures, or Minecraft characters.

The most touching of these pieces is titled simply “Pops and I.” In it, a smaller flattened cube nestles against a larger one, overlapping slightly, so that its “head” rests on the other’s “arm.” Looking at it made me think of my own father, who died seven years ago, and I came very close to crying. In fact, some viewers may consider this piece — or Oliver Bell’s work in general — too sentimental. But how many artists do you know who can bring you to the verge of tears with nothing but a few tinfoil rectangles? It’s an incredible feat.

Larry Bell has cannibalized his own work in the past, most notably in his “Fractions” series, which he began in 1996, using rejected remnants from his “Mirage” series. But that work remains firmly within the domain of abstraction and is of an entirely different character than what Oliver Bell does with similar materials.

“One Man’s Dumpster” is the first show I’ve seen where an artist whose parent is a well-known artist uses materials from their practice to make their own work. There are many more examples of artists incorporating elements from a father-like artistic predecessor, such as Robert Rauschenberg’s “Erased de Kooning Drawing” from 1953, or Theaster Gates’ reliquary-like presentation of the recently deceased artist Sam Gilliam’s paint-spattered boot at the New Museum in 2022. Such pieces enact an Oedipal drama, paying homage to a respected elder, absorbing their energy and differentiating themselves from them, all at the same time.

There are also many artists who are born into an artistic lineage. Almost invariably, artists with artist parents develop a complex, dialectical relationship with said parents’ work. My friend Cordy Ryman, for instance, grew up surrounded by the art of his father, Robert Ryman, internalizing the language of minimalism and abstraction but without ever thinking of it as something rarified or hallowed. “It was just stuff in our house,” he once told me. In his own art practice, he continues his father’s exploration of materials but says he wants to take art “off of its pedestal.”

A similar dynamic seems to be at play with Oliver Bell. Having worked as his father’s studio assistant for years, he possesses a detailed, in-depth knowledge of his father’s materials and processes. But unlike the rest of us, he’s not awestruck by them. So, instead of using those materials to create big, breathtaking works, he focuses on the emotive potential of castaway remnants, making intimately scaled pieces that communicate personal stories of love and loss.

The exhibition closes May 30, so contact the gallery to experience it before it ends.

Oliver Bell's 'One Man’s Dumpster Is Another Man’s Garden' communicates personal stories of love, loss