About the Artist
Robin Mandel works in sculpture, installation, photography, and video. Across these media, his work is an investigation into time, light, and motion. His recent exhibition venues include the Zillman Art Museum at the University of Maine, the List Gallery at Swarthmore College, Boston Cyberarts Gallery, Currents New Media 2016 in Santa Fe NM, the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland ME, and the Wassaic Project in Wassaic NY. He has also exhibited in NYC, Portland (Maine), Boston, Montreal, Venice, Barcelona, and Jerusalem. He has held residencies at the MacDowell Colony, the Fine Arts Work Center, and Anderson Ranch Arts Center, and has been awarded grants from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts and the St. Botolph Club Foundation in Boston. His teaching credits include the Rhode Island School of Design, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Maine College of Art, Colby College, and UMass Amherst, where he is currently an Associate Professor. He lives in western Massachusetts.
artist’s statement
In my sculpture, video, and installations, motion (or implied motion) is the catalyst for narrative. Motion creates a changing relationship between two or more entities, and thereby a story. I place everyday objects or images (a candle, a bottle, a face) in situations of balance or opposition, and explore the narrative potential of their arrangement: harmony, connection, and play, but also tension, longing and impasse.
Videos loop, motors rotate; both do the same thing over and over. My goal is to make this repetition meaningful, prying open the loop to allow a viewer to inhabit it, or twisting the loop tightly enough to create something new. These bent and twisted loops open the door to paradoxes: things that are both moving and still, there and not there, material and immaterial. I create objects and images that tell an impossible story.
In moments of conflict, confusion, or wonder, our seeing and our knowing diverge. My work operates in that cognitive gap, privileging neither knowledge nor experience, admitting instead the contradictory truths of both. To hold two opposing ideas in mind at once is a powerful act. It enables empathy; it is an antidote to intolerance; it validates doubt as an intellectual tool. To see one thing and know another – to grapple with paradox – the mind must find a way to allow for the impossible.