Walter Robinson
At Jeffrey Deitch Projects in New York
After three years of running the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Jeffrey Deitch has returned to New York and reopened his old Jeffrey Deitch Projects space on Wooster Street in SoHo. For his first show at the revived gallery, Deitch chose to bring in a survey of Walter Robinson’s paintings, curated by Barry Blinderman, which had been at the University Galleries at Illinois State University in Normal and the Galleries at Moore College of Art & Design in Philadelphia.
Robinson has been an influential figure in the New York art scene for decades, from the 1970s, when he was an art critic at Art in America to 1996–2012, when he was the editor-in-chief of the online magazine artnet. All the while Robinson’s work as a painter has been finding champions, especially his ironic and plush adaptations of pulp novel illustration and pop culture imagery. “Walter painted Nurse Paintings before Richard Prince and Spin Paintings before Damien Hirst,” says Deitch. “He has long been at the center of the art community but his modest manner and his disdain for aggressive careerism have left his work less recognized than it should be.”
“Walter Robinson: A Retrospective” was at Deitch’s gallery in early fall. PROVOKR presents here, for the pleasure of our readers, three images from that exhibition and three more (including Motel Marriage, above) from an earlier show at Dorian Grey Gallery, all of them potent and painterly explorations of prurience and art.
