Exhibition | Armando Ramos’ Unsettled Toys Convene at the North Dakota Museum Of Art

Armando Ramos’ new solo exhibition at the North Dakota Museum Of Art features familiar toys transformed into curious configurations. He draws from bygone pop culture to reimagine childhood memories distorted by the mysterious effects of time, space, and thought. In his show Something Absurd (June 16 – July 26, 2015), you will find things like a giant colorless gummy bear puckering its lips at his own flavor and a physical world cartoon character melted to the gallery floor.

Above Image: Armando Ramos, Exhibition Shot, Something Absurd, North Dakota Museum Of Art

Ramos’ playful work is making its way around the U.S. with shows over the last couple years at the Blue Door Gallery; ND, Red Lodge Clay Center; MT, The Cohen Gallery at Alfred University; NY, and a sculpture planned for this September’s Art Prize at the Grand Rapids Museum of Art, MI. He is Assistant Professor of Art at Valley City State University in North Dakota.

“My art practice is intended as a playful counterpoint to the darker images and ideas that inundate us through mass culture. I use irony and humor to evoke a sense of parody in my work. As an artist I am interested in the manipulation of images from everyday life and popular culture and how this visual information can be redirected and give life to my creations.”

Nearly all of the sculptures in Something Absurd express an unsure consciousness. The pieces appropriated from products, like the illuminated Halloween ghosts in Day Hollow, have falsely happy gazes, with their true feelings and stories revealed through their altered positions and display. They are working hard to blend in with the mainstream, a sense of rehabilitation that can be seen in Bean Top whose face is contorted into a grin, fighting a natural grimace.

The exhibition shot reveals that all of Ramos’ sculptures are unsure about how they sit and some even appear disabled. Bean Top needs a thrown together cart with wheels recalling Spider Baby, the leader of the mutant toys from Toy Story, Lois needs to lean against the wall, and Motion Lotion was not allowed a support and simply melted onto the floor.

“I seek to emphasize the intricacies of everyday life, which allow us to relate to each other while stirring a sense of the odd or unique that thrives in every one of us. The core of my work lies in the stories of the characters I explore and how they act as placeholders for a time that can no longer be attained, one that takes us back to a time of playfulness and naiveté in our ideas about the world.”

Justin Crowe is Writer and Director of Operations at CFile.

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