Interdisciplinary

INCREDULITY : Autonomy + Desire

Oliver Lawrence Rinne

Exhibition

See it On Campus: Level 1

Visitor Info

A glimpse into the research, process, + installations that led to my final grad piece. I work between oil painting and ceramics, tracing the body as something unstable, porous, + in flux. Through fragments of Baroque imagery and processes of reconstruction, I return to the body as a site where devotion, eroticism, + control begin to blur. My practice moves through rupture and repair – where meaning is not fixed, but continually made and remade.

UNDERGLAZE RESEARCH

^{M390 Tiles, underglaze, Pseudo Maolica Overglaze.
approx. 3.5 x 3.5″}

This body of work began with fragments (as seen in the tiles above).

Small studies of Baroque paintings. Cropped, isolated, + held in suspension in works such as Manfredi’s Cupid Chastised (seen to the left). I found these images already charged. Bodies caught in gesture, in proximity, in something unresolved.

By cutting into these scenes, I shift their center of gravity. Authority loosens. What was once didactic begins to tremble. Latent eroticism + Queer undercurrents rise to the surface, and the image becomes a site of tension rather than certainty. Cropping becomes both incision and care. A way of reclaiming what has been fixed into place.

This gesture extends into material. Clay, oil paint, underglaze, + stainless steel hold memory differently. Through pressure, weight, residue. Together they form a language of touch. The historical image meets the body not as representation but as matter shaped and reshaped over time.

The gorgeous vase was thrown by Alex Chung.

ACTS OF ABSOLUTION – Installation

Gradually, the work turns fully toward form. Through a series of ceramic gimp masks – lovingly named Murdoc, Maynard, + Bart.

Image gives way to object, surface to structure. These pieces emerge through a process of negotiation: clay removed, built up, interrupted. Seams, wrinkles, and stitched ruptures mark the surface, holding both fracture + continuity at once.

^{Ceramic, underglaze, Overglaze, beeswax taper candles, plywood chest, salt, + textiles.}

In this process, the body is never singular or resolved. It is assembled + reassembled. Through memory, through touch, through transition. Each form becomes a kind of altar: a breath held between…

Devotion + violation.

Protection + restraint.

Concealment + revelation.

Here, vulnerability is not an end point, but a generative force.

Something that opens. Something that insists on becoming.