Rather than pursuing variations on by now familiar themes, the Sacramento and Emeryville-based Robert Ortbal follows a path that may well twist into an entirely different dimension. Recently you might find the serious and intellectual Ortbal wearing an oversized dog head, or riding a bike while in the guise of a giant rabbit. His sculptural art practice has gradually evolved to focus on “eccentric behaviors” performed in wearable artwork.

Robert Ortbal in his studio.

All of us have recently been thrown into a Twilight Zone universe, and when Ortbal’s recent show “Marmalade” at Sanchez Art Center in Pacifica was, like so many exhibitions, cut short that also meant no artist talk—or did it? Ortbal, along with guest curator and former Oakland Museum Chief Curator Phil Linhares, decided to hold the talk online, via a Zoom meeting. They joined us in the form of talking heads, exchanging thoughts and alternating with intriguing images of the exhibition. A followup call with the artist allowed for a closer degree of human connection, speaking one-on-one in real-time.

Robert Ortbal, Midnight Sunset, 2015

Ortbal’s sculptural practice has always raised more questions than it answers, his installations populated with irregular geometric or biomorphic objects that writhed and crept across walls, like organic forms mutated in the lab. There remain vestiges of the scientist in Ortbal, although he allows that this was more appropriate for his earlier bodies of work, ones evoking underwater creatures or crystalline formations. His unique vocabulary remains, “my language and my thinking take place in the bending of a wire, or the coating of a surface.”

Robert Ortbal, Neverland, 2015

Growing up in the South Bay town of Campbell, a working-class suburb back before the tech boom transformed Silicon Valley, Ortbal explained to me that “you could roam somewhat feral” as a boy. Family expectations were that he followed a traditional path, his dad’s military background had led to a career as a mechanic for the airlines, and he took a dim view of his son’s artistic ambitions. Undergrad school at SF State, where Ortbal focused on ceramics, was one thing, but attending grad school at UC Davis, where noted faculty such as band Mike Henderson propelled him farther down this unconventional path, was quite another. As his father grew to appreciate the seriousness of Ortbal’s work, and just how hard he worked at it, “we eventually made peace.”

Robert Ortbal, Dumb Bunnies, 2018

Since 2003 Ortbal has been on the faculty at Sacramento State University. Each year, the Crocker Art Museum’s education department hosts U-Nite, a community outreach event. The SSU art professors are strongly encouraged to participate, however their artwork is given the short end of the stick, painters for example asked to display work on an easel in the hall. In response, Ortbal came up with an unorthodox idea. One day, as he explained to Linhares, while visiting a costume shop, he was confronted by a wall of bunny rabbit head masks. “It stuck with me,” he explained, as he devised a plan to bring 20 Dumb Bunnies (2018), rabbit-headed artists and arts professionals, to the Crocker event. They cycled over from the artist’s house, an alarmed woman they passed on the street remarking, “this is not good…” Upon arrival, they paid their way in with carrots. If Ortbal’s intention was fairly benign, not everyone was so amused, “Pissed some people off big time,” admits the artist who insists it was meant as a humorous, absurd action more than a political one.

Installation view of Marmalade.

Ortbal’s most recent exhibition “Marmalade,” featured sculpture, drawings, photographs and video. In one corner of Sanchez, a collection of objects were clustered on a gray structure composed of square platforms positioned at various heights on spindly supports; Ortbal and Linhares discussed the way this finessed the need for a “forest” of intrusive pedestals, inventive installation choices have long been a key element in the work. Medium-scale sculptures consist of assorted geometric forms, each a conglomerate of segmented parts, one of lengths of cylindrical hunks of something, perhaps foam, others more rectilinear. As with earlier works, the objects gain interest in the textural encrustations applied to the surface, paints and other coatings slathered roughly here, blobbing like fungal growths there, a low-key palette of black, white and grey predominating.

Robert Ortbal, Crystalline Jester, 2015

Crystalline Jester (2015), a large multi-faceted object in earth tones, punctuated by triangular planes of red, hovers imposingly mounted on a wooden dowel. Like many of these objects, it can be worn. As the wearable art sits, inanimate, there is a sense of anticipation. Video and photo elements were virtually impenetrable in the Zoom presentation; they apparently include brief iPod footage of the artist in Bad Dog (2019) persona, peeing on the wall of the Crocker, along with Polaroids of other “eccentric behaviors”—Ortbal prefers to display these intimate in scale, to draw the viewer in.

Installation view of Marmalade.

Ortbal emphasizes that the “work is shifting and embracing the idea of ambiguity and emptiness.” His work has always triggered multiple sensations and associations beyond the verbal, beyond ready comprehension. Trying to put a finger on the misty place in which these constructions reside, we discuss the “collapse of truth” and the absurdity of the past three years that informs them, along with our transition to the new virus era. The recent work presents a new mindset to adapt to—less Richard Tuttle and more Nick Cave. Ortbal’s plans for the future involve a new body of sculptural work including tiny figures absorbed into abstract environments, an eccentric world in miniature. While serious about the work, Ortbal’s practice is also imbued with a strong sense of humor, and, as Linhares said, “a pleasantness,” something we can all use more of these days.