07/30 - 10/30/2011
Tony Robbin: A Retrospective, Paintings and Drawings 1970-2010
The Orlando Museum of Art (OMA) is pleased to present this retrospective exhibition of Tony Robbin’s paintings and sculptures, which spans a period of forty years and reveals an artist whose focus and insight has produced an extraordinary body of work. Robbin’s central concern over this period was to explore strategies for representing four-dimensional space in two- and three-dimensional abstract art. The results were works that offer the viewer a dazzling visual experience grounded in the artist’s rigorous understanding of the principles of higher-dimensional geometry. Robbin has noted: “Artists who are interested in four-dimensional space are not motivated by a desire to illustrate new physical theories. . . . We are motivated by a desire to complete our subjective experience by inventing new aesthetic and conceptual capabilities.” His imaginative power to bring together the worlds of art and science successfully can be seen in this exhibition.
Robbin has had over 25 solo exhibitions since his debut at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1974, and has been included in over 100 group exhibitions in 12 countries. He was an originator of the Pattern and Decoration movement in contemporary art. Robbin holds the patent for the application of Quasicrystal geometry to architecture, and has implemented this geometry for a large-scale architectural sculpture based on quasicrystal patterns at the Danish Technical University in Lyngby, Denmark, as well as one for the city of Jacksonville, Florida. He is a pioneer in the computer visualization of four-dimensional geometry. Since 1981, his realtime rotation programs of four-dimensional figures have been useful for obtaining an intuitive feel for four-dimensional space, and quasicrystal space.
The OMA has long recognized Tony Robbin as an important and innovative artist and has demonstrated this through acquiring and exhibiting his work. The OMA is grateful to the collectors who generously lent works for this exhibition, including Cindy and J. D. Alexander, Lisa and Joe Jensen, Linda and William Malzone, Eileen and David Peretz, Norma and William D. Roth and Marcia and Howard Zipser. The OMA also thanks fellow artists Joyce Kozloff and Robert Kushner, art historians Carter Ratcliff and Linda Dalrymple Henderson, mathematician George Francis and art collector Norma Roth for their essay contributions to the exhibition catalog.
The Orlando Museum of Art is supported by United Arts of Central Florida with funds from the United Arts campaign and by State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, the Florida Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Images
• Tony Robbin, Untitled, 1976, acrylic on canvas, 54 1/2 in. x 140 in., Gift of William D. and Norma Canelas Roth.
• Tony Robbin, 2005-7, 2005, acrylic on canvas, 56 in. x 70 in., Collection of the artist.
• Tony Robbin, D-53, 2006, digital print on paper, 30 in. x 40 in., Collection of Lisa and Joe Jensen.
• Tony Robbin, 2009-1, 2009, acrylic on canvas, 56 in. x 70 in., Collection of the artist.
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- Admission: $8.00
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