|
The Directors of Marlborough Gallery are
pleased to announce an exhibition of recent
works by New York based artist Bruce Robbins.
The exhibition will be held at Marlborough
Chelsea, 545 West 25th Street, New
York, from January 15 through February 14,
2009.
This monographic exhibition, Robbins’
second with Marlborough Gallery, will include
nearly forty works in a wide range of
media, including paint, wood, jute, and clay.
Experiencing the variety and totality of Robbins
work is akin to being in the landscape,
experiencing your surroundings—walking
through a city, following the embedded footprint
of a ruin, tracing your finger along the
mortar of an antique building, noticing the
glistening rows of nail enamels and lipsticks
in shop windows, or watching city lights
stream into long red, green, and white lines
slicing through the night sky as you are transported
at high speed—the visceral and the
conceptual merge and Bruce Robbins’ work
takes on rationality and gravitas without losing
one iota of vitality.
Bruce Robbins was born in Philadelphia
and graduated from the Cooper Union School
of Art and Architecture in New York City. In
the mid-seventies he gained attention as a
New Image Sculptor with a series of painted
and constructed ladder and seesaw works. He
later began exploring his long standing interest
in architectural form by producing a series
of pilaster and door sculptures, which were a
hybrid of painting and sculpture. Over the last
two decades he has continued explorations in
sculpture and painting utilizing architecture
as a common theme.
Robbins has long explored his fascination
with structure by photographing sections
of ancient stone walls and colorful wooden
shanties during his course of travels though
Europe and the Caribbean. These photographic
studies continue to serve as a touchstone
for his trademark Walls. This exhibition will
feature new wall constructions from this series,
including Wall Reconstruction (Change
and Permanence), 2008 (mixed media, 72 x
96 x 7 ½ in./ 182.9 x 243.9 x 19.1cm); Wall
Reconstruction (Day), 2007 (acrylic, wood,
resin and jute, 98 x 72 x 7 ½ in./248.9 x 182.9
x 19.1 cm) and Wall Reconstruction (Night),
2007 (acrylic, wood, resin and jute, 98 x 72 x
7 1/2 in./248.9 x 182.9 x 19.1 cm). Handmade
wooden blocks of varying sizes—some painted
or stained, others natural—are stacked
to create imposing, albeit lyrical, structures.
Upon viewing these Walls, the blocks may initially
appear to be randomly placed; however,
these works gradually reveal themselves to
be carefully built and considered constructions.
The Walls deal with building structure
as a source of symbolism as well as a meditation
on painting and sculpture.
During the 1980s Robbins developed
his quasi-architectural vernacular, and in the
mid-1990s he initiated a major public project
comprised of dozens of paintings and drawings.
Entitled Berlin Windows, the series was
permanently installed in newly constructed
sites in Berlin and expanded the visceral and
conceptual scope of Robbins’ oeuvre. His use
of repetition and drawn, painted and incised
line—enacted with apparent speed—to create
overlapping bands, layers, and veins of
bold color against gritty black and white grids
is an apt reflection of the anxiety and dynamic
of a contemporary city in the process of reinvention.
Recently Robbins began a new body of
work that mines history and muses on the
subject of new monuments, public spaces,
“Main Street,” and evolution. This exhibition
will include a range of startling and mysterious
large and small-scale sculptures from this
series. They are made of paint, plastic, wood,
and clay and combine references to ancient,
modern, and contemporary architecture—recalling
ruins, cathedrals, International Style,
shack culture, and city plans. At first glance,
these forms are highly implausible—armatures
and walls that cannot function. Though
the walls are reconstructed elements, which
are a fundamental part of architecture, they
embody nonchalance—appearing as if they
have occurred partly by chance. Conversely,
they also reflect a dead-serious work ethic
and evidence the love of making things by
hand. Monument (Campanile), 2008 (fired
clay, gesso, wood, 48 3/4 x 10 5/8 x 10 5/8
in./123.8 x 27 x 27 cm), Monument (Colonnade),
2008 (fired clay, gesso, wood, 51 3/4 x
16 x 16 in./131.5 x 40.6 x 40.6 cm), and Monument
(Dome), 2008 (fired clay, gesso, wood,
59 x 8 x 8 1/2 in./149.9 x 20.3 x 21.6 cm) are
all examples of work in this series.
Another series in the exhibition will be
comprised of five works under the title Painting
Construct. Ranging in size from the onefoot
square Painting Construct (Horizon), 2008
(acrylic on jute on panel, 12 x 12 in./ 30.5 x
30.5 cm) to the large Painting Construct (Adobe),
2006 (acrylic and jute on wood panel, 84 x
90 in./213.4 x 228.6 cm), they are expressively
simple with ghostly shapes that portend
wonder and the passage of time. Existing
at the other end of the expressive spectrum
are the high-sheen, brightly-colored hybrids,
called Built-Outs, which are at the same
time compellingly visceral and intellectually
stimulating. Works such as Built-Out (Blue
Flower), 2007 (resin and enamel over jute and
wood, 16 x 16 x 4 1/2 in./40.6 x 40.6 x 11.4
cm), Built-Out (Cruciform Flower), 2008 (resin
and enamel over jute and wood, 16 x 16 x 4
1/2 in./40.6 x 40.6 x 11.4 cm) and Built-Out
(Four Corner Flower), 2008 (resin and enamel
over jute and wood, 16 x 16 x 4 1/2 in./40.6 x
40.6 x 11.4 cm) sing with bright colors in grid
patterns that revel in uneven, intentionally
imperfect lines.
New to Robbins oeuvre are highly refined,
deeply reflective acrylic and resin based
paintings including Wall Painting (Night),
2008 (acrylic, wood, resin and jute, 84 x 84 in.
/213.4 x 213.4 cm), Wall Painting (Late Summer),
2008, 72 x 72” and Wall Painting (Fire
Wall), 2008, (acrylic, wood, resin and jute, 48
x 48 in./121.9 x 121.9 cm). These offer a spellbinding
visual complexity of layered painted
lines and deeply reflective sub-surfaces.
Robbins has exhibited extensively
throughout the United States and internationally.
His work is in numerous public collections,
including the Los Angeles County Museum
of Art; The Museum of Contemporary
Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Modern
Art, New York; Neuberger Museum of Art,
Purchase, NY; St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis
and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
An illustrated catalogue, with an essay
by Deborah L. Roldán, Exhibition Coordinator,
Fundación Juan March, will be available at
the time of the exhibition.
brucerobbinsstudio.com
|
