Image above: The Weight of a Blank Page; papier-mâché, Paper, Glue and Acrylic; 40’W x 52L x 80H | 2025
Gearbox Gallery is proud to present Todd Laby’s The Weight of a Blank Page in our Inner Room project space. Laby captures the fraught and intricate dynamics of beginning—the moment when inspiration meets hesitation, and endless possibilities collide with the fear of taking the first step.
A papier-mâché sculpture of cascading blank paper squeezes from the crack between two walls. The sculpture expresses the tension of creation: the pressure of ideas trying to emerge and the weight of decisions yet to be made. Across the room, a wall of sketches offers a frenetic counterpoint—a visual archive of scattered concepts, half-formed thoughts, and the chaotic beginnings of the creative impulse.
Through these contrasting elements, Laby invites viewers to step into the vulnerability of the creative process, exploring the frustration and courage required to move from blankness to expression.
My art is process intensive. It is the result of layered, compounded building that gradually evolves into sculptural expressions through an immense number of micro-decisions. Based on concept drawings, themselves born of many iterations, the pieces focus on our relationship with materiality, subtly and subversively revealing our impacts on one another and the places we inhabit. I transform mundane artifacts or moments, taken from our daily lives into visually provocative images, most often sculptures, whose subtle narrative provokes a deeper reflection. With materials ranging from plywood, broken, toys, metal, and papier mâché, the pieces are textured, multi-sectional 3D neo-mosaics that flicker between whimsy and tragedy.
-Toddy Laby
770 West Grand Ave.
Oakland, CA 94612