Robin WintersHuman Nature (the face takes a special place in the space of memory)

Throughout his career, California native and New York-based performance artist, painter, glass-blower, installation artist, and general laborer Robin Winters has been consistently difficult to pin down, at times even difficult to locate, since his various occupations, artworks, and social contacts have travelled him throughout the Western world. In recent years it has become evident that such untiring diversity is the point of Winters aesthetic and conceptual project, a chameleon-like investigative endeavor that significantly feeds off of and sustains the artist’s life. And Winters is keenly aware of the many contexts and durations of that “life”: the life of certain styles, mediums, conceptual ideas, or an artist’s “currency” in the right galleries and magazines. By avoiding any overly concrete or restrictive allegiances Winters is free to live and live again, like a fly lighting just long enough to be noticed but not long enough to be trapped. What is most impressive and rejuvenating about Winters’ way of working is the invariable effect his personality has on his projects; they are simultaneously touching and intelligent without being pretentious or grand. Winters’ knowledge and technical skills, and his mirthful, confounding “art and life” juxtapositions contradict and enrich our understanding of both.

The Renaissance Society will present a three-part project by Winters. The first two parts will be a survey of his work from the past 10 years, and a new series of glass, bronze and clay sculpture created specifically for the gallery site. For the third part, Winters will be in residence in the gallery for the duration of the exhibition, making portraits and collaborative works with gallery visitors and conducting interviews and discussions. Winters’ exhibition and his physical presence in the gallery will encourage visitors to explore with him the basic human desire to depict things and the psychological need to reveal.