PAST EXHIBITION

Robert Rauschenberg: Gluts

May 30, 2009—September 20, 2009

The exhibition features the Gluts, a select  group forty sculptural works begun in 1986 and continued intermittently until 1995. After breaking boundaries with his celebrated Combines, in the late 1950s, Rauschenberg’s artistic attention in the 1980s turned toward an exploration of the visual properties of metal. Assembling found metal objects such as gas-station signs, deteriorated automotive and industrial parts littering the landscape, he transformed the scrap-metal detritus into wall reliefs and freestanding sculptures that recalled his earlier Combines. The series Gluts was inspired by a visit to Houston on the occasion of Robert Rauschenberg: Work from Four Series, an exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Museum in 1985.  In the mid 1980s, the Texas economy was in the throes of a recession due to a glut (or surplus of supply) in the oil market that Rauschenberg took note of.

Asked to comment on the meaning of the Gluts, Rauschenberg offered: “It’s a time of glut. Greed is rampant.  I’m just exposing it, trying to wake people up. I simply want to present people with their ruins. I think of the Gluts as souvenirs without nostalgia.  What they are really meant to do is give people an experience of looking at everything in terms of what its many possibilities might be.” A year after Robert Rauschenberg’s death the Peggy Guggenheim Collection pays tribute to one of the greatest and most influential American artist in the postwar generation.

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