1998, vegetable dye transfer on polylaminate, 61″ x 61″
March 10 – April 16, 2000
The Gallery of Fine Art, Edison Community College, is pleased to present the extraordinary exhibit “Robert Rauschenberg: Recent Work.” Comprised of work completed between 1997 and 1999, the exhibit will open March 10 and close April 16, 2000.
Robert Rauschenberg, often cited as the most important artist of his generation, did more than any other artist to reach beyond contemporary thinking by challenging limits, perceptions, and every other boundary in sight. After all, this is the artist who erased a de Kooning drawing, created a tire impression on paper with John Cage, worked extensively with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, ushered in “Happenings” and “Pop Art,” and influenced virtually all artistic thinking since Abstract Expressionism.
A career retrospective was organized by and displayed at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York and the Guggenheim Museum, Soho, in late 1997. The exhibit of more than 400 pieces showed Rauschenberg from 1948 to the present. In the fifty years of relentless pursuit of imagery, Rauschenberg’s mark of free association and experimentation is seen on painting, performance, collage, sculpture, printmaking, and photography. It was Rauschenberg’s first retrospective since 1976 and one of the largest exhibitions ever held of work by a living artist. Following the New York opening the exhibit began touring with stops in Houston, Texas, as well as venues in Germany and Spain.
The exhibit at The Gallery of Fine Art, Edison Community College, is comprised of 13 large format pieces ranging in size from approximately 5’ square to 10’ x 15’, completed between 1997 and 1999. These works, made with vegetable dye transfers on polylaminate, utilize a highly technical process of computer-driven laser transfers of his photographic images onto the pictorial surface.
It is a very significant opportunity for Southwest Florida to view these rarely seen pieces selected from Mr. Rauschenberg’s collection. To make this exhibit more available to the students and faculty at Edison Community College and to the greater Fort Myers area, the normal days of operation are being extended to include Mondays.
