Presented in collaboration with the
Robert Rauschenberg Foundation on the occasion of the artist’s Centennial,
Gladstone is mounting the first survey of Rauschenberg’s sculptural practice in
thirty years, spanning his production from the 1950s through the late 1990s.
Examining Rauschenberg’s sculptures through the lens of scale, the exhibition showcases
over 30 sculptures that relate in size to the human body, whether floor-,
pedestal-, or wall-based. Drawing from myriad media and disrupting the
distinction between abstraction and empirical representation, Rauschenberg's
sculptures are rooted in his career-long dedication to artistic experimentation.
Rauschenberg is renowned for blurring
the line between artistic genres, painterly gesture, and three-dimensionality. The
artist maintained a robust sculptural practice throughout his long and
prodigious career. Underscoring the artist’s remarkable use of found and
readymade materials, the works on view are assembled from industrial detritus,
everyday objects, decorative items, and organic forms. They are the result of
improvisatory gestures—gathering, twisting, combining, adhering, tying—that
Rauschenberg described as responses to items found in his environment,
“treasures” that he would bring back to his studio, seeing in them a potential
for new form. Claiming a “sympathy for abandoned objects,” he created a body of
strictly sculptural work that is rarely presented as such.
For this exhibition, Gladstone is
pleased to present key works from various series, including the Scatole
Personali (1952–53), Elemental Sculptures (1953/59), Combines
(1954-64), Kabal American Zephyrs (1981– 83/1985/1987–88), Gluts
(1986–89/1991–94), and the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange (ROCI;
1984–91) in an installation designed by Selldorf Architects to reveal the
continuity of his unique vocabulary within an expansive set of sculptural
positions. Given Rauschenberg’s protean imagination, this exhibition also
features a number of his sculptures that were not aligned with specific series
and exist on their own formal terms. Key loans from institutional and private
collections augment the selection of work from the Robert Rauschenberg
Foundation to further argue for the artist’s keen sculptural sensibility, even
if he resisted aligning himself with one medium. This exhibition traces the
trajectory of Rauschenberg’s creative output as a whole, with the
three-dimensional objects serving as key touchpoints in an expansive and almost
uncategorizable oeuvre. The last survey of Rauschenberg’s purely sculptural
output prior to this show was in 1995 at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
This exhibition is accompanied by a fully
illustrated catalogue designed by Chris Svensson with an essay by sculpture
expert, Lisa Le Feuvre, Executive Director of the Holt/Smithson Foundation,
entries on each of the individual sculptural series represented, and detailed
exhibition histories.
In 2025, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation will commemorate Robert Rauschenberg’s 100th birthday with an international celebration of the artist’s expansive creativity, spirit of curiosity, and commitment to change.