OCHOA, Ruben

Los Angeles-based artist Ruben Ochoa draws from ​​the realm of construction and infrastructure, sourcing mass-produced products from home improvement stores or salvaging them from urban spaces. His sculptures, assembled from rebar, metal plates, wooden pallets, concrete blocks, road barriers, dirt, and other utilitarian components, range from room-filling structures to two-dimensional works, while others rest airily upon their pedestals.

In Steel Life Porcelana, a bundle of white rebar, bound together by thin wire, rests diagonally across a cement block. Their color is peculiar: a stark, matte white. In every other respect, they seem ordinary. Such materials could be found on a construction site, or amid the debris of a home renovation. Surprisingly, however, the rebar’s pristine white is not painted on but inherent to the material itself. Its texture and form are replicated with uncanny accuracy in porcelain—a far more fragile and fine substrate. Here, the hard and unyielding meets the brittle and light, as Ochoa prompts us to reflect on the constituent materials of our built environment and the ways they are employed to shape society.