Clint Imboden — “Things,” August 2 through August 31, 2013 

This August, Bay Area mixed-media and installation artist Clint Imboden will present his solo show, “Things,” at Loakal. A year in the making, “Things” is a series of found object-based works made from materials scavenged from local flea markets and estate sales.  

“I start with the artifacts of daily living, things that most people discard or overlook: battered globes, worn shoes, dilapidated tools,” said the artist. “I’m drawn to old materials because they foster purposeful imperfection in my art, an attribute that’s connected to their previous lives. I use them for their connotative, associative or narrative possibilities.”

Using familiar objects, Imboden seeks to elicit an emotional reaction from the viewers, playing on the associations and connotations that come with commonplace items and placing them in new contexts.

“My installation work is tactile and handmade; as an artist, I focus on process and on topical, issue-based content,” Imboden continued. “I want people to be caught up in the experience of my work, just as I am, in making it. My goal is to have them come away from an encounter with the work knowing something new about themselves.”

About Clint Imboden

Born in 1953 in Saint Louis, Missouri, Clint Imboden grew up surrounded by the eccentric collections of his parents. His father had an avid interest in pre-Prohibition brewery advertising while his mother was more whimsical, collecting everything from antique, plastic animal toys to Southwestern kitsch.

“Like my mother, I can be drawn to new objects, without a clear idea of why I am attracted to them or how they will fit into the larger scheme of my work. Like my father, I need at times to step back for a moment and try to balance the emotional attraction with the larger picture,” said Imboden.

Imboden is both a self-taught artist and a mental health professional. His experiences with psychology, his early aesthetic influences as well as his love for 20th century art — from Andy Warhol to Robert Rauschenberg to Marcel Duchamp — shape his work.

“A central element from my psychology background has become an intricate part of my art: my belief that viewing art is equivalent to therapy. The individual is as much an equal partner in the art-viewing process as they are in the therapeutic one,” Imboden described. “Through the use of text, Braille, or Morse code, I challenge the viewer to commit the time and energy it takes to read or decipher elements in my art to discover it’s full meaning. As in therapy, the individual has to meet me half way.”