crop
It is not very often that a title incorporates an exhibition’s themes as well as did ‘Crop’ by Charles Robb at the Institute of Modern Art (IMA). Robb used Crop to pile on the metaphors for a show that consisted of just three white sculptures randomly dispersed over a sparse ‘field’ in the space. Two of the sculptures were portrait busts and a third was a torso fragment and bust. In metaphoric terms, the bust-forms were ‘cropped’ human figures, as well as being outcrops of the sculptural tradition. It was then an easy passage to the idea that the sculptures themselves were the crop, the product of an artistic tradition. Significantly, the statues were not ideal versions of the human form; on the contrary, they were positively malignant, but they were still a crop. And, as the figures sprang from the gallery floor as if organically attached to it, another powerful metaphor resonated—of a crop growing from an (art) field.
Robb’s sculptures seemed to be the by-product of a failed experiment in genetic modification, for the overriding message in the show was that of decay and ruination. In the Western tradition, the human form has served as a paragon of artistic and cultural power, but Robb’s human fragments were torn out of this ideal and were scattered over the floor like stillborn mutants. The desire to sculpt the perfect human form was derived from the classical era (including the Roman bust portrait), but Robb is far more interested in the romantic and expressive elaboration of the sculptural tradition. This leads to another subset in Robb’s metaphorical schema, for his pieces dealt with the struggle between the classical and the romantic