(RED BANK, NJ) -- The Oyster Point Gallery is pleased to announce that they will be showing work by Robert Melee that has not been seen before. These wall sculptures are deceptive: they look like everyday objects, but they decidedly are not. Robert Melee elevates and transforms the ordinary. The exhibit runs from January 24 to March 31, 2025.
Robert Melee's Artist Statement, "My multimedia practice explores the psychological contrasts between beauty and grotesquerie, nostalgia, and critique. I am interested in the universal psychology of everyday life, and I aim to make it my own. By utilizing recognizable household objects, I paint and deconstruct them, transforming these ordinary items into sculptures. This practice exists at the intersection of high and low art, allowing them to interact and cross-pollinate.
"My work suggests an underground or alternative narrative about how and why visual ideas develop. Since much of my language is drawn from the private realm of domestic environments, the work evokes emotional responses that are both uncannily familiar and disarmingly strange.
The Oyster Point Gallery is located at at 146 Bodman Place in Red Bank, New Jersey. Free parking is available.
Melee is an American multidisciplinary artist whose work has been extensively exhibited in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. Notable venues include Tuscan MOCA (solo), Columbus College of Art & Design (solo), Milwaukee Art Museum (solo), Corcoran Museum of Art, The Contemporary Art Museum Houston, New Jersey MoCA, Higher Pictures in NYC (solo), MoMA PS1 in Queens, Sculpture Center in Queens, New Museum of Contemporary Art in NY, White Cube in London (solo), Sutton Lane in London (solo), David Kordansky in California (solo), Portugal Biennial in Lisbon, and the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA, as well as Gallery Hyundai in Korea.
In 2018, Melee was awarded an Artist in Residence position at Tucson MOCA in Tucson, AZ. In 2015, he received the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant in New York, NY. Additionally, he spent five weeks in 2010 at the Center for Contemporary Art Residency (Futura) in Prague. He participated in the National Foundation for the Advancement in the Arts Residency from 1998 to 2000 in Miami, FL.
Melee's works are part of the collections of several prestigious institutions, including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Haifa Museum of Art in Israel, the Milwaukee Museum of Art, the Portland Museum of Art, the Allen Memorial Art Museum, and Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio. Robert Melee’s art has been reviewed in various international publications, including Sculpture Magazine, The New York Times, Artforum, Modern Painters, Art in America, Flash Art, The Village Voice, Art Review, New York Observer, Art Papers, Bomb, Zing, and Architectural Digest, among others. Melee received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York, NY.
Oyster Point Gallery Exhibitions, originally conceived by President Kevin Barry, and currently curated by Ellen Martin, provide a prestigious and viable alternative gallery venue to artists from New Jersey and nearby locations.
Both emerging and established artists, many of whom are award-winning, have been included in the exhibitions that are shown in the public spaces of the first two floors of the Hotel.
The work is primarily two-dimensional and encompasses painting, photography, wall-mounted sculpture, collage, and collaborative work. The Gallery is an asset both to our community and guests of the Hotel.
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