United States

Gray Wielebinski

In this work, Wielebinski creates a large tapestry from multiple ‘scarves.’ Printed on the textiles, Wielebinski layers found imagery with their drawings of monstrous figures to create ambiguous narratives. The imagery oscillates between beauty and the grotesque, creating new possibilities of embodiment. Collage is an essential mode of making for Wielebinski, for in its hybridity there is a sense of becoming – they are drawn to its potential power to subvert or create context or meanings, often from what already exists. The process of collaging runs through their practice in many forms – there is a constant layering of imagery, materiality and concept, to create works in textile, video, sculpture and on paper. An avid collector, Wielebinski’s source material comes from their vast archive which has developed from childhood.

‘Ultimately, this work is about reckoning with our relationships to the earth and the world around us, to our own mythologies and histories we’ve been taught and perpetuate either through belief or ignorance, the iconographies, statues, and heroes we hold up, the systems we don’t question and have been told are inevitable, and the need to broaden our scope of vision and see beyond ourselves in order to recognize the potential and necessity of working collectively and to greater goods rather than only look out for ourselves, or we are doomed to continue to repeat our same mistakes ad infinitum.’ (Wielebinski, 2021) 

United Kingdom

London

Hales | London

Textile Art

Liquid Gold

'Barrelman' (2020) is in an edition of 15 screen prints made with unique colour combinations. The work depicts a rodeo clown, a performer who works in bull riding competitions. The barrelman’s job is to provide comic humour and to be a distraction to the bull if the rider falls off. The rodeo is a symbolic activity in the US, often seen as representative of machismo, cowboys, the possibilities of “going west,” and rugged individualism in American culture. Wielebinski explores the barrelman, for the roots in clowning and the parodying of cowboy culture. Framing the barrelman are images of rocking horses alongside pump jacks that litter the Texas landscape. The childhood toy in this context makes a case against feigned ignorance or denial. Complicating traditional narratives, Wielebinski speaks to our obsession with dominating nature, the mundanity and everyday cruelty of American life, and the impulse to repeat the same histories over again.

Print

Barrelman

In detailed ink on paper works Wielebinski explores relationships to animals, particularly our tendency to love them mainly symbolically or through anthropomorphized lenses. Horses are often seen as representative of machismo, cowboys, the possibilities of “going west,” and rugged individualism in American culture. The manmade interventions of spurs and the horseshoes become reoccurring symbols in the work. The spur most often representing aggression towards nature and a desire to control it, it is both useful and decorative. The horseshoe, while having a use function, has a strong connection and deep history throughout cultures of good luck. Wielebinski explores the famous parable of how St. Dunstan tricked Satan by horseshoeing his hooves and making him promise to protect those with the now powerful symbol hung outside their house. In these works the horse serves as a strong symbol and reminder of collective myth making that seeks to undermine and overwrite darker histories of the United States. 

Drawing

Saint Dustan and the Devil

Other Men's Wars

Not So Different

Bard/Barb

The Kelpie (Mulholland)

Good Luck!

Gilded Cage

Thick Skin

Hales is delighted to announce Oil and Water, a solo exhibition of new work by Gray Wielebinski. In their debut exhibition with the gallery, Wielebinski continues with their explorations of the intersections of mythology, identity, nationhood, and memory. Reconfiguring and transforming iconography and visual codes, their work seeks to navigate and question society’s frameworks and belief systems.

Wielebinski (b. 1991 Dallas, TX, USA) lives and works in both London, UK and Los Angeles, CA, USA. They received a BA from Pomona College, Claremont CA, USA in 2014 before completing an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK in 2018. 

In Oil and Water, Wielebinski takes the American cities of Dallas, Texas and Los Angeles, California as a starting point to explore the perpetuating mythologies that are entrenched in both places. Spending their formative years in the two cities, Wielebinski explores their personal relationship to the places that shaped their identity and personhood. The title and concept for the show is drawn from how the cities came to be – through the mining of oil in Texas and the syphoning of water from the valleys in California. Built on reaping the natural resources, Wielebinski states ‘Both cities made me, but they were both made by a type of “original sin” that continues to live on physically, psychically, and aesthetically throughout the cities themselves at almost every level of daily life.’

Characteristic of Wielebinski’s multifaceted practice, Oil and Water exhibits works across a range of mediums, which rethink and expand on the totemic potential of iconographies. In sculptural works they are utilizing specific materials such as cement and wood to reference the materials of the aqueduct and piping, which allowed Los Angeles to steal water from the Owens Valley. Wielebinski is also particularly interested in the iconography and psychic landscape of pump jacks, the oil drilling machines that litter the flat Texas landscape that enact a repetitive almost meditative motion, which belies their true function. 

Wielebinski’s rocking horses mirror the shape and motion of pump jacks – ultimately going nowhere. Their work explores our relationship to animals, particularly our tendency to love them mainly symbolically or through anthropomorphized lenses. Horses are often seen as representative of machismo, cowboys, the possibilities of “going west,” and rugged individualism in American culture. Wielebinski’s rocking horses serve to undermine these tropes by presenting them as childlike, impotent, with a repetitive function. The childhood toy in this context makes a case against feigned ignorance or denial. Complicating traditional narratives, Wielebinski speaks to our obsession with dominating nature, the mundanity and everyday cruelty of American life, and the impulse to repeat the same histories over again.

Manmade interventions of the spur and the horseshoe become reoccurring symbols in the work. The spur most often representing aggression towards nature and a desire to control it, it is both useful and decorative. The horseshoe, while having a use function, has a strong connection and deep history throughout cultures of good luck. A famous parable has St. Dunstan tricking Satan by horseshoeing his hooves and making him promise to protect those with the now powerful symbol hung outside their house. 

Oil and Water highlights the contradictory nature of symbolism. Wielebinski invites us to relook and rethink our relationship to symbols and to question perpetuating mythologies. They encourage a break from inevitability and allow for different realities and truths to exist at once.

Wielebinski’s solo exhibitions include Dark Air, curated by DATEAGLE ART at Seagar Gallery, London (2019); Shaved in Opposite Directions at B. Dewitt Gallery, London, UK (2018); and A Dog Pees On Things For More Than One Reason at Gazelli Art House, London, UK (2018). They have been included in many group exhibitions including, ltd los angeles, LA, USA; Polignano a Mare, Italy; Lychee One Gallery, London, UK; Goswell Road Gallery, Paris, France; Organon, Odense, Denmark; J Hammond Projects, London, UK; Enclave Projects, London, UK; Turf Projects, UK; Good Sport Gallery, London, Ontario, Canada; Toynbee Studios, London, UK; Casa da Dona Laura, Lisbon, Portugal; and Bloomsbury Theatre, London, UK.

Their work has been written about extensively, most notably in Art Maze, It’s Nice That, Dazed, Time Out London, AQNB, Coeval Magazine, Ocula Magazine, Something Curated and Hammer Museum Graphite Magazine. Wielebinski’s work is in the collections of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA, USA and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Library & Archives, CA, USA.

Oil and Water

Oil and Water

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