Dario Robleto

Survival Does Not Lie in the Heavens looks at Dario Robleto’s ingenious adaptations of nineteenth-century folk traditions to explore mortality and memorialization. Robleto’s sculptural objects use the model of the folksy mantelpiece keepsake—the elaborately framed photograph, the trophy, commemorative embroidery—and counter their traditionally saccharine, sentimental appeal with brilliant conceptual gestures. Thus, paper pulped from soldier’s letters home (from various wars) are repurposed to create a keepsake of silk, goldleaf and seashells; a homeopathic treatment for “Human Longing” includes medicine made from a ground-up recording of Sylvia Plath; and a framed memorial to Marie Louise Meilleur, who died at the aged of 117, includes hair lockets made of stretched audiotape recordings of other supercentarians. Throughout these works, Robleto’s concern is with the human management of death through objects, affirming that the task of survival takes place here on earth.

Dario Robleto confronts the experience of war through its material remnants. Materials for his sculptures may include lead marbles used by Civil War soldiers, soldiers' letters to sweethearts and human bone dust. Robleto then expertly fashions these into improbably poignant, handmade objects such as a child's mourning dress, an audiotape and even a carafe of wine.