When you're in the studio painting, there are a lot of people in there with you - your teachers, friends, painters from history, critics... and one by one if you're really painting, they walk out. And if you're really painting YOU walk out.
– Philip Guston
Rob Ober’s painting clothes and studio bear witness to a frenetic and wild artistic production. Ober creates intuitively and at rapid speed, with very little time spent second guessing himself– it’s all gut-instinct and simply trusting the universe to help resolve a battle between his artistic vision and what the painting wants to become.
To the artist, it often feels like something, or someone, has taken over his hand as it re-lays scenes depicting mythical deities with snakes for arms, potent images of sex and love, historical figures such as Yukio Mishima and landscapes populated with alligators devouring humans content with their fate. But it’s all him, of course, there is no divine intervention; it is simply Rob Ober believing in himself and the process, and more importantly letting himself go to it. On the best days, the experience is transformative and spiritual.
Born the son of a US diplomat, Rob Ober spent his youth growing up in Moscow, Dehli, Athens and then later Bethesda, MD and Florida. These locations still inspire his art practice, but on the periphery as we can rarely discern the exact time, place or person featured in his works. This nebulous concept of setting and “being” give Ober the freedom to express thoughts, feelings and desires he might not otherwise be comfortable sharing, in turn offering the viewer a glimpse of his truth as an artist and person.
After college, Rob Ober (b. 1968, Wiesbaden, West Germany) began obsessively collecting Russian nonconformist art, which led him to open Ober Gallery in Kent, CT in 2016. Here, he gave early shows to artist-friends including Brian Belott, Katherine Bradford, Lance De Los Reyes, and Robert Nava. Ober began painting privately seven years ago, and Motley Crew is his first solo exhibition with the gallery.
