|
ARTnews ©1998 Sarah Schmerler
This review of Arthur's 1997 show at the New World Art Center appeared in ARTnews in February 1998.
Arthur Robins
NEW WORLD ART CENTER
The 60-some paintings in Arthur Robins's recent show were full of tenacity, a touch of psychosis, and a lot of promise.
Robins's efforts reange from souvenir-style views of New York gently laced with foreboding
(a couple courting on a blanket in Central Park amid strongly colored shafts of failing light) to disturbing urban-fever dreams
(phantasmagoric visions of the subway, where subterranean tracks lurch into the distance and stairways melt into snake-like spirals).
Robins uses warped perspectives to powerful psychological effect in these tunnel scenes and in a series of images he made of all-night billiard halls.
In one, a shiny black eight ball dwarfs the surrounding players;
in another, a corner pocket looms in the foreground like a yawning abyss.
The artist paints confidently, as though determined to get his thoughts out quickly in a kind of colorful automatic writing.
|
