On view February 8 - March 28, 2025

Sat 2/8, 4-6 pm: Opening reception
Sat 2/22, 2-4 pm: Winter concert with cellist Sara Stalnaker
Sat 3/15, 4-6 pm: Rememnant - a conversation with Robert Maloney

13FOREST Gallery is pleased to present Innerstates, an exhibition of new work by Robert Maloney.

Urban landscapes have been a significant focus in Robert Maloney’s work throughout his career as an artist, culminating in his contribution to shaping the skyline of Jamaica Plain through the Haffenreffer Brewery smokestack restoration project in 2017. Maloney’s prints feature iconic images of urban decay and renewal, layering scaffolding, billboards and water towers to construct angular, abstracted depictions of dynamic metropolitan scenery.

The work in Innerstates expands on Maloney’s familiar visual lexicon to encompass more intimate themes, using the metaphor of architectural deterioration to process the experience of losing his father, William Maloney, to Alzheimer’s disease in 2023. William was a prolific artist and a profound inspiration to Robert, who turned to his artistic practice to grapple with the challenge of witnessing his father’s decline from Alzheimer’s.

Unaccustomed to delving into his personal life in his work, Maloney found the prospect of creating portraits of his father too vulnerable. In seeking to understand his father’s disease, Maloney began viewing online testimonials from people discussing how they managed having Alzheimer’s or supporting loved ones with the disease. The subjects of these videos became emotional avatars for Maloney to process his own feelings and allow him to create his Innerstates Testprint series, which visualizes the fractured mental state of those with Alzheimer’s.

Maloney was particularly struck by the contrast between outward appearance and the inner mental state of those affected by Alzheimer’s disease. The faces in the Innerstates Testprints are fragmented by billboards, scaffolding and crumbling structures, revealing the interior reality of those enduring memory loss. He layers different portraits together, creating visual noise and a heightened sense of disrupted identity. Maloney confronts the pain of interacting with a loved one who can no longer remember you with portraits that expose the ravages of a disease like Alzheimer’s.

With Innerstates, Maloney has not only pushed himself to innovate thematically, but technically as well. When the physically demanding process of wood carving became a challenge, Maloney sought other ways to create his prints. Polyester plate printing, which he used to create the Innerstates Testprints, involves laser printing his drawings onto a flexible polyester sheet, which is then used as the printing plate. The results of this process evoke a more hand drawn effect which is a contrast to his hand carved wood block prints.

Looking for easier materials to carve, Maloney also began working with rubber plates. These flexible plates allowed him to create curved printed structures with plaster, transforming his water tower print into a three-dimensional water tower model. Maloney’s inclusion of sculpture in his printmaking enhances his architectural themes, adding texture and dimension that evoke the feeling of inhabited cities. The body of work in Innerstates highlights Maloney’s pursuit of inventive ways to push the boundaries of printmaking and his own fascination with the visual language of the city.