In baking tins and The toys are gone now. What’s left is what was there from the beginning, an industrial approach to aesthetic rigor inspired by the process artists of the 1970s. What he brings to their base is a comic air of insufficiency, a refusal to take up more space than he absolutely needs, an inclination to subtract rather than to add. Now that the dolls, frog’s legs and other broken toys are not there, it’s easy to see how unnecessary they were. For Mirenzi, the plainer, the better.<\/p>\n Nearly all of his current sculptures are small, from palm-size to arm’s length. Some sport some Untitled mixed media construction, 2009 Untitled mixed media construction, 2009 Untitled mixed media construction, 2009
\ncardboard boxes painted to resemble baking tins, Robert Mirenzi’s loony assortment of
\ndoll heads, doll hands and toy innards rise, as if full of yeast.
\nSome dolls are doubles of themselves, pink plastic casting plaster white
\nshadows. Some have lips sewn shut. Some are smeared with pale primary
\npaints. Tiny hands pop out of pull toys. Some heads are veiled, as if
\nwrapped to cool on a kitchen counter.
\nWhat distinguishes them from a century of similar surrealisms?
\nTheir rigorous code, the structure that charges these oddball materials
\nwith formalist rigor.
\nMirenzi likes to start in the middle of a fairy tale and blunt all
\nsuggestion of coherent narrative. The birds have eaten the crumbs
\nleading out of the forest. This point of paralysis inspires his art,
\nwhich is inventive, absurd and unforgiving. (via<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nkind of old metal frame or industrial pipe serving as frame. <\/p>\n
\n6 x 7 x 1\u00bc
\ninches<\/i><\/p>\n![\"robertmirenzican.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/robertmirenzican.jpg\")
Whatever polish he brings to bear never obscures the down-and-out nature
\nof his enterprise: funk on the cheap, industrial process sculpture
\nproduced in the shadow of dying industries.
\nColor, usually an exhausted primary, is used sparingly.<\/p>\n
\n15 x 45\u00bd x 7\u00bc inches<\/i><\/p>\n![\"robertmirenzi3.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/robertmirenzi3.jpg\")
Detail<\/i>:<\/p>\n![\"robertmirenzidetl.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/robertmirenzidetl.jpg\")
He is a poet of comic insufficiency – toys gone bad,
\nhobbies ridden off the deep end and work a delusion.
\nAs a theme, insufficiency has inspired its share of art, but not often
\nvisual art. Writers have claimed it (Dostoevski, Kafka, Samuel Beckett,
\nRichard Wright, Donald Barthelme) and actors have embodied it (Buster
\nKeaton, Peter Lorre, Al Pacino, Lily Tomlin) but even the most humble of
\nphysical materials acquires authority when structurally organized into
\nan artwork.
\nArtists seeking to glorify the shabby, from Kurt Schwitters and Louise
\nBourgeois to Robert Rauschenberg, invariably transform
\nit into focused beauty, even elegance. And art made from coarse
\nmaterials that does not rise to elegance usually lacks a compositional
\nimperative and for that reason is hard to consider art at all.<\/p>\n
\n8 x 19\u00bc x 1\u00bc
\ninche<\/i>s![\"robertmirenzisewn.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/robertmirenzisewn.jpg\")
Here’s where Mirenzi shines. He can
\nmanipulate his unlikely combinations of crafted and found objects into
\nsculptures whose aesthetic power never undermines their projected sense
\nof powerlessness.They limp along out of anyone’s spotlight, even their own.<\/p>\n