For this week’s virtual collection post, OKCMOA’s Bryon Chambers and Roja Najafi discuss one of their shared favorites, INXIT by Alfonso Ossorio.
Created in 1968, the assemblage sculpture, a wooden door and frame adorned with various materials, has sparked some interesting conversations in the galleries. Chambers and Najafi speak to some of those questions, share insights into the life of Alfonso Ossorio, and explore the time and place of the art world in which this object was created.
Let’s kick things off with a quote from the artist. “The human being is the link between God and the material world… Even a little waste piece of plastic or a bone is just as much alive as the abstract concept of God, which is meaningless unless it is incarnated. …[O]ne of the things I try to do is to infuse into the inanimate a reference back to the whole hierarchy of human experience beginning with the material, using objects instead of just paint.” (Quote from the 1968 Oral history interview of Alfonso Ossorio in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution)
Credit: Alfonso Ossorio (American, 1916–1990) INXIT, 1968, Plastic and various materials on wooden door and frame, 96 x 80 x 24 in. Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Gift of the Ossorio Foundation, 2008.129
