By Marc Country

What is an autograph? In the parlance of common pop culture, an autograph is the signature of a person; particularly, someone famous. More generally, the word autograph refers to “something written or made with one’s own hand,” such as an original manuscript or a work of art. Conceived in this broader sense, the assembled sculptures and drawings in this exhibition are all authentic autographs of their maker.

    An autograph defies common conventions as much as it adheres to them, and in so doing, becomes a vehicle for the expression of individuality. Despite writing in a common language, one man’s John Hancock looks unlike another’s. So too, a depersonalizing media like steel sculpture or blind contour drawing are made thoroughly personal through the unique touch of the artist. And just as our signatures begin in childhood at the level of conscious writing, ultimately becoming the unconscious, instinctual marks of our adulthood, Rob Willms’ autographs are extensions of his maturing artist-self. These artworks are the highly evolved records of significant physical gestures and aesthetic perceptions.

    The blind-contour-style drawings are felt on paper, both in the sense of their medium (fine- and fat-tipped felt-markers, mostly black, some coloured, on white paper) and in terms of their execution: like the needle of a seismograph, registering every tremor of ground motion felt by its inputs, the hand inscribing these autographs records the motion of the artist’s eyes as they feel their way across the scene observed.

    Similarly, the large and small abstract sculptures are idiosyncratic, three-dimensional autographs, too. Like the drawings, a sparing use of colour and an emphasis on edges, contrasting thin with thickness, characterize these sculptures. Perhaps, this overarching focus on dynamic profiles drawn in tensed, humming lines, and on the subtly attuned scale variations of these edges, are the hand-written hallmarks that best define the current artistic signature of Rob Willms.