Walter Robinson
- Artist Statement
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Artist Statement
Walter Robinson typically takes as his subjects commonplace images that circulate aimlessly in the spectacular society, their omnipresence testifying to their function as polymorphous indexes of desire. Robinson’s work has always been poised on a threshold between virtue and vice, whether via pulpish paintings of illicit romance or still-lifes of liquor on a shelf and cake on a plate. The candle paintings enrich the carnal cosmology, so to speak, by situating the senses of senses of smell and touch within a dialectic of darkness and light. At the same time these works are subtle comments on the quest for insight among chaos that animates the contemporary avant-garde.
The subject of the “Spa Candles” series – the lit candle – is overloaded with the semiotics of spirituality and the infinite, of religious devotion and metaphysical revelation. Robinson’s source material here however is not found in church, but rather is drawn from online advertisements for massage parlors, where the candle sets an atmosphere of bodily relaxation and indulgence. The discrepancy between real transcendence and simply “setting the mood” is palpable. Some candles aren’t only spiritual, they’re carnal as well.
Walter Robinson was born in 1950 and has lived and worked in New York City since 1968. In 1973 he launched Art-Rite magazine with two collaborators, publishing irregularly until 1977. During the same period he was a co-founder of Printed Matter, and somewhat later served as a correspondent for the cable TV show “Art TV Gallery Beat.” He began exhibiting his paintings in earnest with Collaborative Projects, participating in “The Real Estate Show” and “The Times Square Show” in 1980. In 1982 he had his first exhibition with Metro Pictures, and later showed at galleries in the East Village and elsewhere. He wrote reviews and art news for Art in America until 1996, when he became founding editor of Artnet Magazine, a post he held until 2012. A retrospective of his paintings opened at Illinois State University in Normal, IL, in 2014, traveling to the Galleries at Moore in Philadelphia, and debuting the new Jeffrey Deitch gallery in Soho in 2016. He has exhibited internationally at Galerie Bertrand in Geneva, Stems Gallery in Brussels, Inna Art Space in Hangzhou, China, and Vito Schnabel in St. Moritz, Switzerland. In 2017 his work was included in “Fast Forward: Work from the 1980s” at the Whitney Museum. In 2020 a survey exhibition was organized by Richard Milazzo for Galleria Mazzoli in Modena, Italy, accompanied by a 600-page mongraph titled “A Kiss before Dying.”
