for ‘Time Out’ magazine
He has had more than a dozen solo shows (including one at the Whitney Altria); now Dario Robleto makes his New York gallery debut with a deceptively modest exhibition titled “Fear and Tenderness in Men.” Small, intricate, folksy-looking keepsakes are displayed in frames and vitrines, lending the gallery the look of regional historical society. Fitting, since Robleto’s untitled sculptures originate from relics, which the artist transforms into moving meditations on loss.
To evoke the “male tenderness” of the show’s title, Robleto uses tokens of personal affection salvaged from American wars (Revolutionary to Gulf). His raw materials include correspondence between soldiers and loved ones, scraps of uniform fabric and shrapnel recovered from battlegrounds. In most cases, the mind-bogglingly complicated processes used to create the sculptures are their most arresting feature. A delicate birdcage is constructed from bone dust: love letters are pulped to make elaborate flowers.
At times, Robleto crowds too many layers into his pieces, Facsimiles of Civil War era bullets (used to bite down on in surgery in lieu of anesthesia) are cast in a material made by dissolving audiotape used to record poems about war and death – the checklist gives viewers a lengthy syllabus to chew on. The gesture seems excessive because the artifacts Robleto recycles – including antique wedding rings and tiny flowers made from braided human hair – embody sorrow eloquently enough on their own. Still, without making specific reference to current conflicts, Robleto’s sculptures bear witness to the grievous toll of war.