Edgar Orlaineta & NH DePass

Swivel Gallery is pleased to present The Tool in My Hand Is the Idea in My Head, a two-person exhibition featuring works by Edgar Orlaineta and NH DePass.

As humans we iterate an exercise against time: we accumulate objects, we collect and record stories and encapsulate them into personal and collective archives.

Working primarily with traditional woodcraft, Edgar Orlaineta has long explored the relationship between art, craft, and the industrial, at the intersection between sculpture and design. His hybrid sculptures are informed by a mild irony, allowing him to combine references to Modernism, history, literature, and pop culture, consistently intertwining amidst playful characters and biomorphic forms.

Similarly in DePass’ carpentry work, the inspiration from mid-century modern design encounters eccentric imagery from nostalgic Americana culture. This results in both a critical and ironic commentary of the resulting superficially idiosyncratic aesthetic of consumerism and appropriation which eradicated boundaries between high and low cultural products, a substitution for something that can appeal to the taste of mass society. Blending craftsmanship with the accelerated rhythm of today's production, Orlaineta and DePass bend contemporary culture by dialectically combining classical carpentry and books with cutting-edge digital production and AI techniques.

The results are nostalgic cultural “tableaux” or contemporary “cabinets de curiosités” which disrupt historical and cultural timelines while capturing and defining the intricacies of the “new” world.

Hailing from different cultural and historical backgrounds, Edgar Orlaineta (b. 1972, Mexico City) and NH DePass (b. 1990, New Orleans) share between them a passion for crafting material chronicles that preserve stories and traditions, and simultaneously create new ones. Acting as both archaeologists and anthropologists of modern and contemporary culture, the two artists’ practices question today’s cultural and economic value of craftsmanship, recording and elaborating of both individual and collective data, formulated manually and likewise technologically.

Edgar Orlaineta (b. 1972, Mexico City) lives and works in Mexico City. In his practice, Orlaineta focuses on hybrid sculptural forms that draw inspiration from modernism, popular culture, and specific historic moments. Orlaineta primarily explores post-war design and architecture that generally depicted biomorphic shapes owing to strong surrealist influence. His works have been presented in several shows both in Mexico and internationally, including most recently: Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City,Carbon 12 Gallery, Dubai, Wizard Gallery, Milan, La Tallera, Morelos, Mexico; Proyectos ArtBo, Bogotá; Proxyco Gallery, New York;Galería de Arte Contemporáneo de Xalapa, Mexico;Steve Turner Contemporary, Mexico City;Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City;Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (MCA), Santa Barbara;Casa Estudio Luis Barragán, Mexico City; Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City;Museo de Arte Moderno (MAM), Mexico City; among the others. His work is held in prominent institutional collections, including: Caixa Forum, Barcelona; CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco; Colección Jumex, Mexico; Denver Art Museum, Denver; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, Washington; Kadist, Paris, France & San Francisco; Museo Amparo, Puebla; Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City

NH DePass (b. 1990, New Orleans) is an artist from New Orleans, Louisiana. He holds an MFA in Sculpture from The Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY and a BA from The Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA. In his work there is disjuncture between old and new: a tension between craft and digital innovation. DePass uses classical techniques like hand sewing and carpentry while incorporating digital graphics and printing to create works that disturb historical and cultural timelines. In 2021, his work was featured in the solo exhibition Form Destroyer at Thierry Goldberg Gallery in New York City. He has exhibited in group exhibitions at The Pit, Los Angeles; Public Gallery, London; GYNP Gallery, Berlin; and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans. In 2021, he was awarded “1st” place in the Louisiana Contemporary exhibition at the Ogden Museum of Southern art.