Moving materials through time and space needs to be dealt with respect for the painting discipline, the psychic space required and the time to dream. Although the artist showed up daily in the studio to paint and develop new bodies of work, there was an organic process of discovery that launched an odyssey of invention and self-realization. Originally the entire program of work was supposed to happen within a six month period but lasted over a decade of uninterrupted solitude and artistic fulfillment. The experience seemed so impractical, self indulgent and satisfying that Robbins just went along for the ride of his own making in order to mine his innermost feelings and thoughts. The result was a body of work which can now be expanded through deeper investigation of the various series that developed in the last decade. It is now time to leave the sanctuary of the studio and to share the fruits of the artist’s labors. The work speaks for itself as an authentic practice of making things that illuminates the artist’s intentions, desires and sensibilities in the world.
bio
In the mid-seventies he broke into the art scene as a new image sculptor with a series of painted and constructed ladder sculptures which were initially exhibited by Betty Parsons and Jock Truman. The ladder works were a symbolic motif that connects the spiritual and earthly realms. By the late seventies he moved on to creating a series of post-modernists works called pilasters which were shown at MOMA in New York as well as the Venice Biennale’s Art of the Seventies and the Rudolph Zwirner Gallery in Cologne.
Robbins in his studio, 2023
During his career he has been affiliated and exhibited at Parsons-Truman, Blum Helman, Rudolph Zwirner, Hans Strelow, Knoedler Zurich, Marlborough, Yoshii, Ronald Greenberg, Carol Taylor, Turske Whitney, John Berggruen, Cheryl Haines and Cristinerose Galleries.
His work shown in such museums as Museum of Modern Art at the International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture 1983, N.Y.,Whitney Museum at the 1981 Biennale, Stedelijk Museum’s Recent Acquisitions, 1980 in Amsterdam, Seven Artists and Breathless at the Neuberger Museum, MOMA PS 1 aka Institute of Art and Urban Resources at the ClockTower, Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford Connecticut, Santa Barbara Museum’s Art of the States, Butler Institute of American Art in Ohio, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art’s Innovations in Sculpture and Drawn on the Wall, Harn Museum of Art’s Considerations of the Figure: Magdalena Abakanowicz and Bruce Robbins.
Robbins’ work is in the following museum collections: Harn Museum, Harwood Foundation Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art,Museum of Contemporary Art in LA, The Museum of Modern Art in NY, Neuberger Museum, Phoenix Art Museum, St. Louis Art Museum, Hess Collection Museum, and Stedelik Museum in Amsterdam.
In 2010, Robbins dropped out of the art world to pursue his studio work exclusively, to travel and live outside of New York for extended periods of time. The last decade has been a very productive and inspired period producing sculptures, paintings and works on paper.