LOS ANGELES — Ishi Glinsky’s practice is delightfully diverse. He moves fluidly from painting to sculpture, from abstraction to representation, integrating elements of so-called craftsmanship and fine art, adapting the medium that suits his purpose. Despite this fluid approach, a common thread woven through her work is scale: Glinsky works large, often magnifying smaller objects to epic proportions. He does this not out of pride or bravado, but to honor the traditional art forms of the Tohono O’odham Nation, of which he is a member.
“By taking something and expanding it, I hope to create a monument,” Glinsky said. Hyperallergic. “And to start a conversation on multiple fronts, to inform and educate people if they don’t know, and if they do, it’s done in a new way.”
For his next personal exhibition at the Chris Sharp Gallery in Los Angeles, Lives that broke the Earth, Glinsky will present works referring to Tohono O’odham basket weaving techniques. Using a combination of ink washes, oil sticks, and thick impasto marks made with a palette knife, Glinsky transforms intricate patterns into vividly colored abstractions, zooming in on elemental construction. He juxtaposes two different types of baskets on his canvases: one made from yucca, bear grass and devil’s claw, and another in which craftsmen wind lengths of ball wire together to construct metal baskets.
In his paintings, the expanded loops of wire resemble the spiral shapes of galaxies, suggesting another leap in scale. “It’s a fluid collaboration between the past and the present, the tangible and the intangible,” he explains.
Glinsky will also show his own wire baskets, which he makes by weaving spools of wire into a chain-link fence on a wall-mounted loom in his studio. He then bends and twists them into baskets whose familiar shapes contain a mass of undulating wire, reminiscent of but quite distinct from the traditional technique to which he refers. “One thing that makes him so extraordinary is that he will invent a suitable technique for each medium, which is in a way totally unprecedented,” said gallerist Chris Sharp. Hyperallergic.
His first exhibition with the gallery, Monuments to Survivalin 2021, featured works that reference other Native American traditions, such as Zuni jewelry, or ledger drawings made by the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa and other Plains Indians. He collaborated with Zuni artist Veronica Poblano, one of the creators of “Zuni Toons”, traditional silver and turquoise-encrusted jewelry that references looney tunes and other cartoon characters.
Glinsky uses steel, aluminum and resin to make his versions, whose enlarged size and placement in the gallery suggest a revaluation of the original objects. “People might meet [these works] in a trading post, in a storefront besieged by other Southwestern mayflies,” he said. “I felt the original should take the place of my necklace.” Significantly, Glinsky shares a portion of the sale price with the artists he collaborates with or whose work he references.
Then there’s the jacket, which took up the entire front room of Sharp’s gallery. “Coral vs. King Snake Jacket” (2019) is a meticulous facsimile of the punk leather staple, decorated with metal studs and patches and puffed up to a colossal size. In keeping with his ingenuity, Glinsky fashioned the studs from fence post caps and replicated the texture of asphalt to give the weathered patina of the jacket. The patches resemble those of bands such as the Dead Kennedys and Public Enemy, but have been adapted into Tohono O’odham symbols or icons that support the American Indian Movement (AIM).
Despite the jacket’s punk aesthetic, Glinsky said he chose the shape for its connection to the insignia he made and wore when attending Pow Wows. “You wear this armor in a way when you’re out in the world,” the artist explained. “Regalia is also representative of who you are, where you come from.”
“Coral vs. King Snake Jacket” (2019) was acquired by the Hammer Museum, which recently announced that Glinsky would be included in the next iteration of its LA biennial, Made in LA. The work also caught the attention of Gabriel Ritter, who organized Glinsky’s first solo museum exhibition. On a jagged maze, which opened last fall at UC Santa Barbara’s Art, Design & Architecture Museum. The exhibition was a decade-long investigation, showcasing a cross-section of his multi-faceted practice. Ritter described Glinsky’s works as “not just art forms, but art movements in themselves”.
“Just because art history hasn’t included them in canon is beside the point,” Ritter added.
In light of these exhibitions – and a planned solo exhibition with the PPOW Gallery in New York later this year – one could say that Glinsky is having a moment. All of this attention is especially noteworthy given the unorthodox path he took in the art world. He grew up in Tucson, Arizona, in a family of artists (“Coral vs. King Snake Jacket” features a version of a design his late father made as a teenager) and studied graphic design at community college. before exploring the fine arts. possess.
“I just started painting and finding my way through all the different types of mediums,” he recalls. “Some of them I looked for, others I hid from for a very long time. I was almost intimidated by the painting. I didn’t know what I was going to bring.
He moved to Los Angeles in 2006, regularly pursuing his material explorations, participating in some exhibitions, but remaining largely out of the spotlight. “He didn’t fit into the LA art world like most people usually do,” Sharp noted. That’s not to say he wasn’t career-savvy – he was tapped by Ralph Lauren in 2019 to create limited-edition loafers, an attempt by the brand to address the fact that they didn’t always recognized the sources of their creations. However, her practice has been driven by her desire to share the traditions and works of the Tohono O’odham and other Indigenous peoples, not with nostalgia in mind, but as a representative of contemporary art forms. rooted in history.
“These stories that I hold, I do my best to nurture them and tell them as respectfully as possible,” he said, “but also to open them up and think about the future.”
