Polyp #259-267 (2020)

Robert Anthony O’Halloran
Polyp #259-267
2020
gypsum cement, latex
approx. 26 x 10 x 3 inches
 
The Polyps are a body of work delineated by process, performance and site-specificity serially cast in situ using Hydrostone and latex condoms. The available groupings were recently produced at Arsenal Contemporary (Toronto) as part of a group exhibition titled, Crawling out of a hidden place (September 9-October 17th, 2020) curated by Anaïs Castro and David Liss. 
 
O’Halloran’s process-intensive, multi-sensory installations are informed by a cesspool of movements in the history of Modern Art: Dadaism, Fluxus, Arte Povera, Social Sculpture, Postminimalism, Site-Specific Art, Action Art and Queer Art. Their approach to art making is at times thinly-veiled obscurist autofiction, it is often serially cast in cement and it is usually quite masochistic. A technician and mould-maker at heart, they most often perform endurance-based installations in situ, executing repetitive, laborious and time-based actions using common casting materials to produce psycho-spatial compositions. O’Halloran’s installations parallel the social organism in that they are dynamic micro-societies composed of manifold constituent parts. With an interest in psychosomatics, entanglements with intangibles and the fraughtness of sociality in regard to both other people and institutions, their recent works in visual art and writing revolve around ongoing explorations of social, sexual and ecological health, HIV/AIDS, labour, commodity, the posthumanist body and our collective need for pleasure and mirth in light of certain calamity.