Native Artistic Instincts

On paper and on Google Maps, the Indah Gallery is part of the Roblar Winery complex just outside Santa Ynez. But in fact, a pathway to the gallery takes us through the vines and in a comfortably removed corner of the property, in a neatly retooled barn-like structure far from the complex where eating, drinking, and leisurely lounging take place. The art lives here in its own space, literally and atmospherically.

Gallerist and founder Max Gleason is himself an artist, whose studio is in the back space of a structure once housing farm equipment, but now beautifully reborn as an art gallery. The latest artist on view is, fittingly for Chumash country, Mitchell Robles, whose Native American heritage leads him to interpret ancient cultural signifiers and imagery with a contemporary art sensibility. 

In Robles’s exhibition Many Roads, the centerpiece is the large, vibrantly colored triptych “Thunder Mountain,” lined with icons, symbols, and animal imagery capturing his research into pictographs and rock art — such as might be found in the local “painted cave.” The sum effect is engaging, a sensory wash of visual energy, with indigenous cultural subcurrents.

Stylized animal imagery is more singularly explored in the pieces “Little Thunder Horse” and  “Leaping Brown Horse,” less realistic than ritualistic, and with depictions of saddles, sashes, and masks serving a pictorial function as documentary detailing. 

Warrior-related works are softened by his use of medium and approach, with the mixed media lyricism of “Warrior Shield 1” and the texturally sensuous mixed media of “ceremonial war shirt” pieces such as “Little Running Horse.” Crows, Native American symbols of intelligence and shape-shifting wisdom, are given portraiture treatment in a few pieces woven into the layout of the exhibition. 

Interestingly, Robles manages the juggling act of respecting the iconography of Native American ancestors while tapping into a zeitgeist we identify as recent artistic approaches, including a certain neo-Expressionist attitude. With the dense and intense “Ancient Images,” for example, the more casually organized iconography of the larger triptych are effectively packed into a smaller space, a mash-up effect. A similar ancient-to-the-future gusto feeds into his feverish portrait of an American hero, “Sitting Bull.” 

In general, Robles manages to find a personal expressive route to ramparts of his indigenous past — and American roots at the very source — while channeling methodologies and concerns of the fine art present. Many Roads lives up to its title, in ways at once cultural and lineage-related.  

Next up at the Indah Gallery is an exhibition by Mark Russell Jones, whose paintings are landscape-inspired yet essentially abstraction-based work, almost hinting at Rothko turf. Jones has shown in Santa Barbara before, and his art is well worth a visit in the middle of the vineyard.

Indah Gallery is located at 2190 North Refugio Road, Santa Ynez, and is open Friday-Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. See indahgallery.org.