David Robinson (artist)

Last updated
David Robinson
Born (1964-11-10) November 10, 1964 (age 57)
Website www.robinsonstudio.com

David Robinson (born 1964) is a Canadian artist specializing in figurative sculpture. He is best known for dynamic compositions that situate his figures in abstract formal environments.

Contents

Early life and education

Born in Toronto, David Robinson entered the Fine Arts stream in high school specializing in sculpture. He continued his studies at Langara College and became an Honours Graduate in the Sculpture Program at the Ontario College of Art and Design.

Artistic practice

Robinson's work is an example of contemporary humanist realism that draws on conceptual and metaphysical themes. [1] [2]

Robinson's figures reference classical traditions, but often invert or subvert traditional dynamics. [3] [4]

His early works stirred controversy by combining nudity with Christian themes and imagery. [5] [6] Robinson's sculptures incorporate a variety of materials ranging from bronze, steel and silver to concrete, mirror and paper. Robinson's works range from small unique and editioned works to large-scale monumental sculpture. Examples of large works are those commissioned by parties such as the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, [7] Polygon Homes, [8] the Four Seasons Hotel Resort in Whistler, [9] the Fort McMurray Airport Authority, [10] Century Group, [11] the Rosewood Hotel Georgia, [12] and Trent University. [13]

Notable works

Windward Calm by David Robinson at the Gordon and Leslie Diamond Healthcare Centre. Windward Calm detail1 Sage MacGillivray.jpg
Windward Calm by David Robinson at the Gordon and Leslie Diamond Healthcare Centre.

Windward Calm

Windward Calm is a kinetic suspended sculpture installed at the Gordon and Leslie Diamond Centre at Vancouver General Hospital in 2018. Robinson was inspired to create the piece while spending time at VGH recovering from a cardiac valve repair. [14] [15] The sculpture hangs from a custom winching system and travels vertically through the 7-storey glass atrium, while rotating in the air currents. The sculpture is the subject of a documentary short film titled "A Windward Calm". [16]

Reflections on the River

Reflections on the River was commissioned by the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo. [17] The municipality engaged in intensive public consultation for both art selection and siting. [18]

Further reading

Related Research Articles

Milwaukee Art Museum Art museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

The Milwaukee Art Museum (MAM) is an art museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Its collection contains nearly 25,000 works of art.

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago Art museum in Chicago, Illinois

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in downtown Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is one of the world's largest contemporary art venues. The museum's collection is composed of thousands of objects of Post-World War II visual art. The museum is run gallery-style, with individually curated exhibitions throughout the year. Each exhibition may be composed of temporary loans, pieces from their permanent collection, or a combination of the two.

Gary Hill American artist

Gary Hill is an American artist who lives and works in Seattle, Washington. Often viewed as one of the foundational artists in video art, based on the single-channel work and video- and sound-based installations of the 1970s and 1980s, he in fact began working in metal sculpture in the late 1960s. Today he is best known for internationally exhibited installations and performance art, concerned as much with innovative language as with technology, and for continuing work in a broad range of media. His longtime work with intermedia explores an array of issues ranging from the physicality of language, synesthesia and perceptual conundrums to ontological space and viewer interactivity. The recipient of many awards, his influential work has been exhibited in most major contemporary art museums worldwide.

Baltimore Museum of Art Art museum in Baltimore, Maryland, USA

The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, is an art museum that was founded in 1914. The BMA's collection of 95,000 objects encompasses more than 1,000 works by Henri Matisse anchored by the Cone Collection of modern art, as well as one of the nation's finest holdings of prints, drawings, and photographs. The galleries currently showcase collections of art from Africa; works by established and emerging contemporary artists; European and American paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts; ancient Antioch mosaics; art from Asia, and textiles from around the world.

Fort McMurray International Airport Airport in Alberta, Canada

Fort McMurray International Airport is located 7 nautical miles southeast of Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada. YMM is the largest airport in northern Alberta. It has flights to Edmonton, Calgary, and Fort Chipewyan through airlines Air Canada, WestJet, McMurray Aviation and Northwestern Air.

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Art museum in Richmond, VA

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, or VMFA, is an art museum in Richmond, Virginia, United States, which opened in 1936. The museum is owned and operated by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Private donations, endowments, and funds are used for the support of specific programs and all acquisition of artwork, as well as additional general support.

David Herbert (artist) American sculptor (born 1977)

David Herbert is an American sculptor. He remakes cultural icons such as Mickey Mouse, Superman and a VHS cassette.

Sunnylands Estate-retreat in Rancho Mirage, California

Sunnylands, the former Annenberg Estate, located in Rancho Mirage, California, is a 200-acre (0.81 km2) estate currently run by The Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands, a not-for-profit organization. The property was owned by Walter and Leonore Annenberg until 2009 and had been used as a winter retreat by the couple beginning in 1966, when the house was completed. The city of Rancho Mirage considers the property to be “rich with historical significance” and declared Sunnylands an historic site in 1990. Located at Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope Drives, the property has been the vacation site of numerous celebrities and public officials. Sunnylands is sometimes referred to as the "Camp David of the West."

Rick Gibson is a Canadian sculptor and artist best known for his performance works.

Han Sai Por Singaporean sculptor (born 1943)

Han Sai Por is a Singaporean sculptor. A graduate of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA), East Ham College of Art, Wolverhampton College of Art and Lincoln University, New Zealand, she worked as a teacher and later as a part-time lecturer at NAFA, the LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts, and the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, before becoming a full-time artist in 1997.

Vikky Alexander is a Canadian contemporary artist based in Vancouver, British Columbia. She has exhibited internationally since 1981 as a practitioner in the field of photo-conceptualism, and as an installation artist who uses photography, drawing, and collage. Her themes include the appropriated image, and the deceptions of nature and space. Her artworks include mirrors, photographic landscape murals, postcards, video and photography.

James Kelsey (sculptor) American sculptor

James Edward Kelsey is an American Abstract Expressionist sculptor best known for creating large stainless steel abstract curvilinear sculptures.

The Silver Reuben Award is an award for cartoonists organized by the National Cartoonists Society. Until 2015, the awards was known as the National Cartoonists Society Division Awards.

Ronald Bladen American painter and sculptor

Ronald Bladen was an American painter and sculptor. He is particularly known for his large-scale sculptures. His artistic stance, was influenced by European Constructivism, American Hard-Edge Painting, and sculptors such as Isamu Noguchi and David Smith. Bladen in turn had stimulating effect on a circle of younger artists including Carl Andre, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt and others, who repeatedly referred to him as one of the ‘father figures’ of Minimal Art.

Philip Pavia (1911-2005) was a culturally influential American artist of Italian descent, known for his scatter sculpture and figurative abstractions, and the debate he fostered among many of the 20th century's most important art thinkers. A founder of the New York School of Abstract Expressionism, he "did much to shift the epicenter of Modernism from Paris to New York," both as founding organizer of The Club and as founder, editor and publisher of the short-lived but influential art journal It Is: A Magazine for Abstract Art. Reference to the magazine appears in the archives of more than two dozen celebrated art figures, including Picasso, Peggy Guggenheim, and art critic Clement Greenberg. The Club is credited with inspiring art critic Harold Rosenberg’s influential essay “The American Action Painters" and the historic 9th Street Show.

Elmer Paul Petersen was an American sculptor who worked in metal. His most prominent artwork is the World's Largest Buffalo in Jamestown, North Dakota. Petersen lived and worked in Galesville, Wisconsin. Much of his art is publicly displayed around La Crosse, Wisconsin, where he led the Downtown La Crosse Sculpture Project Committee. The La Crosse Tribune called Petersen "one of the premier sculptors in the Coulee Region" and "instrumental in getting public sculpture scattered throughout downtown" La Crosse. He has worked significantly with welding, including that of found metal objects, and often sculpted in cast bronze.

Chinese Canadians are a sizable part of the population in Greater Vancouver, especially in the Chinese communities in the city of Vancouver and the adjoining suburban city of Richmond. The legacy of Chinese immigration is prevalent throughout the Vancouver area.

William Blair Bruce

William Blair Bruce was a Canadian painter. He studied in France and became one of Canada's first impressionist painters. He lived most of his life in France and on the island of Gotland, Sweden, where he and his Swedish wife Carolina Benedicks-Bruce created the artists estate Brucebo, which was later established as a nature reserve.

Judith Schwarz is a Canadian visual artist. Her work has been featured in exhibitions since 1979.

<i>Garcia Live Volume 16</i> 2021 live album by Jerry Garcia Band

Garcia Live Volume 16 is a three-CD album by the Jerry Garcia Band. It contains the complete concert recorded on November 15, 1991 at Madison Square Garden in New York City. It was released on June 25, 2021.

References

  1. Van Slyke, Bruce (Fall 2002). "David Robinson: L'Être en suspens" [David Robinson: Suspended belief](PDF). Côte Ouest[West Coast] (in French and English). No. 61. pp. 10–14 via Érudit.
  2. Keatley, Chris (July 2017). "David Robinson The Conditional Figure". Pendulum Gallery.
  3. Van Slyke, Bruce (Summer 2001). "Interval: The conditional monuments of David Robinson". Sculpture & pédagogie[Sculpture & Pedagogy] (in French and English). No. 56. pp. 47–48 via Érudit.
  4. Fuglie, Gordon (Spring 2015). "Levity and Gravity: The Sculpture of David Robinson". Image Journal. 88: 25–35.
  5. Wilkinson, Loren (Spring 2014). "Holy Tensions" (PDF). CRUX. Vol. 50, no. 1. pp. 22–41.
  6. Todd, Douglas (March 2002). "Easter art that inspires, provokes" (PDF). The Vancouver Sun.
  7. "Public Art Committee presents Reflections on the River".
  8. "Public Art Registry Richmond - David Robinson". City of Richmond.
  9. Gill, Alexandra (August 2004). "Sleeping with an original". The Globe and Mail.
  10. "Art at YMM". Fly YMM.
  11. "Where Art and Innovation Connect".
  12. Pecknold, Joy (September 2011). "Farmboy Fine Arts, International Arts Consultants". Montecristo.
  13. "Towering sculpture at Trent University in Peterborough will inspire students to follow their dreams". KawarthaNow. September 9, 2021. Retrieved September 10, 2021.
  14. "Waiting for heart surgery, he thought the hospital atrium could use a sculpture. Now he's making one". CBC Arts. January 2018.
  15. "Heart Surgery Patient and Artist Creates Windward Calm, a Sculpture for Hospital Atrium". VGH Foundation. October 2019.
  16. "A Windward Calm - Documentary Short - YouTube". www.youtube.com. Retrieved 2021-01-19.
  17. Thurton, David (October 6, 2018). "After past missteps, Fort McMurray unveils latest public artwork". CBC.
  18. Malik, Nabil (Spring 2018). "Public art: Creating a culturally vibrant region in Wood Buffalo". Plan Canada. 58: 22–24.