PASADENA, CA.- The Pasadena Museum of California Art is presenting Robert Cremean: The Beds of Procrustes and The Seven Deadly Sins, an exhibition that highlights the artist’s highly personal aesthetic language, and his use of figurative imagery to examine the enforcement of cultural conformity through myth and metaphor. In this exhibition, Cremean’s ongoing artistic dialogue on the ordering of social control unfolds in large-scale sculptural installations, which embody the exacting craftsmanship that is the hallmark of the artist’s oeuvre. In addition, the exhibition includes ephemera and preparatory studies, giving deeper insight into the artist’s processes.
Known for communicating his own spiritual struggles and fundamental truths in a universal way, the artist uses the human form as the vehicle for his investigations into life and humanity, which address issues such as genocide, war, aging, identity, economic turmoil, life, and death with equal parts honesty, directness, and elegance. Cremean says, “The artist, as prototype for singularity versus the conforming group, confronts the beds of Procrustes as intrinsic within natural and social Isness,” underscoring his belief that the universal ideas and metaphors examined in these series of works are particularly pertinent at this time when it is anathema for an artist to question the structures and strictures manufactured and enforced by powerful and fiercely self-serving “Culture-Makers.”
In the Beds of Procrustes, the artist reflects on the indelible figure of Procrustes, who according to Greek mythology was a robber-innkeeper on the sacred road between Athens and Eleusis. At his inn, he offered an iron bed to all passersby, advertising it as the perfect fit for all who slept in it. However, Procrustes achieved this “perfect” fit by stretching or amputating his guests’ legs until they precisely conformed to the bed. Comprising part of this installation are fragmented figural representations of the father, the mother, the young man, the young woman, the child, fear, and Procrustes (or Tradition). These seven figures represent the “seven beds” within the metaphorical Inn of Procrustes. Everyone is born into these beds and controlled by Procrustes, who is given great authority within the strictures of society, and thus the connection between Procrustes and nature, sexuality, and reproduction is considered within this installation.
In the second series, The Seven Deadly Sins, Cremean uniquely interprets each sin through the human form, embodying the manifestation of the particular sin; for example, in the panel Invidia (Envy), the human body is submerged in freezing water and the artist’s writings on the panel conclude with “Submerged in suffocating envy, I am frozen in selfpity.” The theme of the violent enforcement of cultural conformity in these series—cutting, trimming, and stretching to fit and the codification of human transgressions—is in constant conflict with the singular nature of the artist’s desire for truth and escape from illusions.
This exhibition is organized by the Pasadena Museum of California Art. The exhibition is accompanied by a brochure with an essay by curator Linda Cano.
