The Brooklyn Rail

Refraction is the distortion that takes place when light moves through different substances. Rob Wynne’s current exhibition AFTERGLOW presents a survey of the artist’s work which hinges on this brief moment when the unexpected seems to happen, and the rules are slightly but noticeably altered—literally bent. Most of the works are predicated on light: liquid mirrors conjure quicksilver loops and words, while photograms capture the recognizable forms of insects and sundry creatures in a state of sublimation. But refraction in Wynne’s hands can be textual as well. Small variations in the spelling of words placed side by side can yield this same inscrutable hairline fracture between what we thought we knew or saw versus what’s actually there.

TWILIGHT VORTEX (2023) is a swirl of silver, green, and deep blue glass dots affixed to the wall, forming patterns from which gooey butterfly forms seem to congeal. It’s a miniature of Wynne’s encompassing room-size piece EXTRA LIFE (2018) from his exhibition FLOAT at the Brooklyn Museum that same year. These loosely implied lepidoptera tug the coldness of the material—the glass’s hard clear materiality and smooth sharp edges—rendering it into a disconcerting sentimentality. Wynne isn’t afraid to be campy or expose an uncomfortable openness, and this is really what makes his work effective. The melting O-shapes and attendant droplets of his glass works such as the silvery LOOP (2022) or the shimmery GREEN WAY (2022) are deeply erotic symbolic representations of slippery, malleable orifices. These forms alternate between melted liquid glass and a central area of flat perfect mirror that allow the viewer to see themselves cast back in the artist’s holes. REFLECTION (2023) spells out the title word backwards, again in lugubrious quicksilver, and indulges in a very silly, but effective visual pun: words always appear backwards in the mirror.

The simplicity of REFLECTION references the other text works in the exhibition, ones that are both visual and diaristic: The Birth of the Viewer (2008) depicts a green egg-like form printed on canvas and then embroidered with the words “THE BIRTH OF THE VIEWER IS AT THE COST OF THE PAINTER.” An enigmatic statement to say the least, but in keeping with Wynne’s willingness to let it all hang out—oftentimes at his own expense and sacrifice. The photogram DANCER DANGER (2005) also plays with this notion of the risk of artistic expression, whereas I WISH I WAS YOU (2005) brings it back to the emotionally asymmetrical mirroring that is the offering of the artist. In LIVING COLOR 17, LIVING COLOR 7, and LIVING COLOR 9 (all 2011) Wynne creates an apocalyptic landscape of, again, erotically suggestive eruptions of pure liquid light attended by a variety of arachnids, millipedes, worms, and butterflies. It has the same inspired guilt/gross-out energy of a Bosch canvas, in a pared down schema and a color palette of blacks, browns, and other darkling shades.

Two small collages from the deep past, comparatively speaking, WATERFALL (1974) and UP SIDE DOWN (1976) serve as historic anchors for Wynne’s optical text experiments. In the former, a postcard of the West Falls in Elyria, Ohio is evenly sliced into thin segments, then shifted at a slight angle, causing the whole image to lurch to the right precipitously. In the latter, three figures stand over a pond in a vintage photograph, their reflection a similar, but not mirror, image. The figures are dressed the same and are similar ages and genders, but the longer we look, the more different the figures and the background appear, and in off-puttingly crisper detail. UP SIDE DOWN seems to capture Wynne’s whole philosophy of reflection/refraction—that clarity and revelation can be attained by gazing into the mirror.