Rocky Dobey

God Machine, hand-inscribed copper sheet, black ink

2000

TRAILER PRISON by Rocky Dobey is a hand-inscribed copper sheet with black ink. It measures 60x36” and slightly less than .25" thick. It features some of the artist’s repeating motifs – the number 13-1/2 appears here as 12 + 1 + 1/2 in the trailer windows. The number refers to 12 jurors, 1 judge, half a chance. Rocky says all his structures are prisons, and this trailer with tentacles is no exception. Trailer Prison is a signature example of the artist's work – the inscribed details are both compelling and powerful, while swirls and spikes evoke both prison architecture and monstrous intent. For over 40 years, outsider artist Rocky Dobey has been producing intaglio prints, etched metal plaques, engraved copper sheets and site-specific public sculptures. Working anonymously for the first two decades, his work has drawn attention to social and political issues like prison and justice reform, neighborhood gentrification, globalization, indigenous sovereignty, drug rehabilitation and homelessness. With striking imagery of demonic towers toppled in flames, horrific machines and cryptic symbols of oppression, Rocky's work soon became a recognized and sought-after stamp of organized resistance. Several of his prints are held in collections, particularly the “Carnival Against Capitalism” poster he produced for the 2001 Quebec City protests against the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Rocky’s poster...

CHECKMATE by Rocky Dobey is a hand-inscribed copper sheet with black ink, acrylic paint, and asphaltum. It is framed in aluminum and measures 108 x 48”. It features some of the artist’s notable motifs – the number 13-1/2 (refers to 12 jurors, 1 judge, half a chance), a monstrous tower of brick with crenelated towers, inlaid with eyes, hooked daggers and barred windows, clouds with lightening bolts, tongues of flame drifting down... Though the swirl of black cloud near the top of the tower also rewards our attention – the engraving here suggesting floral as well as cosmic patterns, biological patterns. Checkmate also contains more subtle mark-making and ritualized ornamentation, such as the wheat sheafs across the expanse of copper, names of people are inscribed in the borders of the tower, vertical hash marks counting off months or years in bundles of five. For over 40 years, outsider artist Rocky Dobey has been producing intaglio prints, etched metal plaques, engraved copper sheets and site-specific public sculptures. Working anonymously for the first two decades, his work has drawn attention to social and political issues like prison and justice reform, neighborhood gentrification, globalization, indigenous sovereignty, drug rehabilitation and homelessness. With striking imagery of demonic towers toppled in flames, horrific machines and cryptic symbols of oppression, Rocky's work soon became a recognized and sought-after stamp of organized resistance. Several of his prints are held in collections, particularly the “Carnival Against Capitalism” poster he produced for the 2001 Quebec City protests against the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Rocky’s poster...

MEDUSA by Rocky Dobey is a hand-inscribed copper sheet with cut diamonds, blue machinist ink and fired porcelain paint. It measures 36 x 48", and framed in aluminum it measures 37 x 49”. It features some of the artist’s notable motifs – a monstrous brick wall with crenelated and flaming towers, inlaid with sparkles of diamond and glass, sword-like flames. New for the artist are the twisting, turning bodies of which there are at least eight. The deep blue background of machinist ink coating the copper provides a momentous, mythological night sky. For over 40 years, outsider artist Rocky Dobey has been producing intaglio prints, etched metal plaques, engraved copper sheets and site-specific public sculptures. Working anonymously for the first two decades, his work has drawn attention to social and political issues like prison and justice reform, neighborhood gentrification, globalization, indigenous sovereignty, drug rehabilitation and homelessness. With striking imagery of demonic towers toppled in flames, horrific machines and cryptic symbols of oppression, Rocky's work soon became a recognized and sought-after stamp of organized resistance. Several of his prints are held in collections, particularly the “Carnival Against Capitalism” poster he produced for the 2001 Quebec City protests against the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Rocky’s poster...

DOES IT LOOK EXPENSIVE by Rocky Dobey is a hand-inscribed copper sheet with cut glass, asphaltum and fired porcelain paint. It measures 24 x 36" and is fr...

WELCOME HOME by Rocky Dobey is a hand-inscribed copper sheet with cut diamonds, black asphaltum and fired porcelain paint. It measures 36 x 32" and is fra...

HOME SWEET HOME by Rocky Dobey is a hand-inscribed copper sheet with cut diamonds, black asphaltum and fired porcelain paint. It measures 36 x 24", and framed in bronze it measures 37 x 25”. Part of the "Home" series of recent works, Home Sweet Home features a darkly shimmering chandelier...

Guillaume Couffignal (French b. 1964) Theatre, 2014. Bronze. 19 7/8 x 13 1/2 x 7 1/4 inches. Signed on the base: Couffignal. Beautiful texture and patina. Guillaume Couffignal is a French Postwar & Contemporary self taught, outsider artist who was born in 1964. He works in bronze casting complex, fantastic, architecture models, abstract theater and boat models that look like relics from the past. He learned the art of lost wax casting with a traditional African foundry in Koudougou, Burkina Faso in Africa when he was 23, blessed to find his way so young. He felt the deep alchemy of the process combining the elements of Nature to produce a concept that did not previously exist in our world. He saw the potential of this earth magic. It forces chance and pushes the limits of bronze because each sculpture can never be exactly reproduced. Like the use of clay, this art has a deep connection with the primitive elements of Nature. There is the wind and the sky and the earth and the fire. There are ashes and dust. Here exists a collaboration with the spirit of the Illusionist, an artist in all his unpredictability. But it is not an art of chance. The Illusionist / artist masters the elements of accident and surprise. He is a magician who controls the secrets of his process. In the case of Couffignal, this has to do with the three-dimensional collage of carefully chosen fragments and shapes and with its earth-like textures, carefully perfected over many years of experimentation. Its textures make the materials lie. They have an irregular patina of wear and bad weather. They make bronze itself secondary with this creamy pigmentation of the earth burnt by the sun. The texture then becomes a painting. Couffignal sets the scene for the pure drama of the void. He fills it with memories and voices. This decor is visually minimal, but this very minimalism points to the importance of his other intentions. Its boats are "soul boats" caught between two universes. Its architectural pieces evoke ruins and nevertheless attest to their own existence. Although this process is ancient, and in this case learned from the African tradition, the true testimony of the power of Guillaume Couffignal is that not a single element of his work derives from something existing. As a true iconoclast, he has taken up a traditional language, learned this language, and starting from this language has created a poetry completely unique and unique to him. Randal Morris, 2013. His work is from the tradition of outsider art, art brut, folk art, naïve art, visionary art and intuitive art with a sophisticated subject matter. A kind of symbiosis of jean Dubuffet and Daniel Arsham. Sculptures as forgotten images of a world where the trace always precedes presence. As in the art of raku, ancestral Japanese pottery where the cooking accident and the patina of use - wabi and sabi - testify to an intimate cosmogonic geography. Omnipresent memory of the color and the smell of the earth - mud, noble material which in Africa is used to erect huts, houses, palaces and mosques. Historically and up to the margins of the caravan route, on the borders of the great Arabic Muslim...

An extraordinarily moving piece by an outsider artist who must have spent many a day conceiving, cutting, hammering, soldering and welding this stunning metal group made of tin and iron. The result is something completely individualistic, which at the same time recalls early medieval...

To Chicago-based artist Patrick Fitzgerald, his miniature car sculptures are a means of traveling through time. Born from a fascination with the soap box derby cars of his youth, each vehicle is an exercise in imagining the future through the lens of the past – or vice versa. Built from found materials collected over the years, the car's futuristic form is layered with personal memories and keepsakes from the past. The most minute of details is always intentional – from the weathered finish to the fictitious sponsor to the miniaturized furnishings of the cramped interior. This sculptural car entitled "Pylon Trunk" is intended as a complement to the rest of Fitzgerald's imaginative cars, something of a service vehicle loaded with removable traffic cones and street signs. A simple truck bed...

A striking and completely unique abstract fibreglass sculpture from the artist's own home. Year: unknown (Ron was active from the mid 1960s to the early 2000s) Colour: Concrete Fram...

Atticus Adams is a sculptor whose work embodies the transformative power of art to create beauty, meaning, and emotional impact from industrial materials. Using mostly aluminum mesh—...

Origin: Chinese Artist: Unknown Dates: Early-Mid 20th Century Title: Pair of Cloisonne Tall Urns Medium: Enameled Copper on Carved Wood base Size: 56 in. x 26 in. x 26 in. (142.24 cm...