We Don't Work Alone

In his new exhibition, We Do Not Work Alone at Proxyco Gallery, Edgar Orlaineta offers a
phenomenological exploration of objects in space. With this arrangement of works he invites
the viewer to participate in a gestaltist “mental idea” of the objects in spatial and temporal
context rather than merely witness a display of inert formal conclusions. This
acknowledgement of the exhibition’s dependence on the spectator to complete the work is
both a philosophical stance and a nod to the historical antecedents that inform the
individual pieces, leading Orlaineta to suggest that, We Do Not Work Alone.
Edgar Orlaineta’s work is known for fusing exhaustive historiographical research into the
midcentury era with a mastery of a variety of modernist craft techniques including:
woodturning, metalworking, weaving, drawing, painting and assemblage.
Orlaineta considers it a paradox that today craft is celebrated as it is neglected. He
considers this a phenomenological anomaly symptomatic of a world connected and
occurring at vertiginous speeds. Craft both privileges the hand of the artist and implies a
delay in the artisanal object’s time-consumptive production. Orlaineta instrumentalizes both
of these nuances of craft as a purposeful means of creating space for thoughtfulness and as
a subversive tactic to subvert the ego through meditative physical process? To quote
Duchamp; “the idea is before the eye, but in this case the hand is before all.”