Artwork Description
Walter Robinson – Tribulation
Dimensions: 36 x 15.75 x 3.5″ finished size
Year: 2020
Medium: wood, plastic, found objects, leather
Tribulation is another assemblage built from found objects, new elements and parts of my older work. Here, the gavel of good judgment is delicately balanced on a melting stick of butter, strapped to a sharp-pronged wool comb atop a rickety wheel—an anxious meditation on mortality and meeting adversity in precarious times.
About his work Walter says, “Through my work, I look at the ways that humanity can work against its own best interests. The studio offers me a laboratory for processing the cultural and political issues we’re confronting, using satire, irony and sympathy in equal parts. Slowly crafting and assembling pieces allows me to channel my emotional responses into visual and physical metaphors. For me, the job of being an artist involves drawing connections between disparate and unlikely parts. In the process, I search for antidotes for human moral failure, making mistakes but ultimately finding balance and resolution. Creation is a natural process; when all other human forms of vanity and arrogance fail us, to quote Walt Whitman, ‘Nature remains.’”
Walter Robinson’s works have been featured in numerous museum exhibitions and are held in choice museum collections. Among these museums are the Crocker Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; San Jose Museum of Art; Sheldon Museum of Art; Chaney Family Collection; diRosa Preserve; Nevada Museum of Art; Djerassi Foundation; New Mexico Museum of Art; Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Fe.