Robin Graubard, I live in my head. Lambda print
PARTICIPANT INC presents Robin Graubard, The Hold Up, a solo exhibition spanning over two decades of the artist’s photographic work. Geographically and temporally diverse, The Hold Up is comprised of several discrete yet overlapping groups of photographs (combinations of color and black & white prints), two slide shows, and a film. They are united by themes such as subculture, violence, displacement, criminality, and social/familial bonding as they occur on all extremes of the economic spectrum.
Structured as a complex installation of photographic vignettes, one first enters Crash Pad, a 35mm slide show of photographs taken in the 1980s—Times Square, Atlanta child murders, the girl band Scab, skinheads, punks, squats—revisiting a not-so-distant past that seems at once immediate and operatic in its detachment from the present. Segue to a recent series of black and white photos, from which the exhibition’s title is derived: Wall Street, the AIG building on the day of bonus hearings in Washington, Bernie Madoff. Intermingled are color photographs of grounds, gardens, a tennis court in disrepair—the home of a Hedge fund manager. The gestures and surroundings of outlaws rich and poor constitute both personal narrative and class analysis in Graubard’s work, as the artist appears to reside at once inside and outside the worlds of her subjects.
Robin Graubard, The Hold Up, Installation View
Robin Graubard, Crash Pad. Digital slide show
Ramones + Talking Heads, Max's Kansas City. Video
Robin Graubard, The Hold Up, Installation View
Robin Graubard, The Hold Up, Installation View
Robin Graubard, The Hold Up, Installation View
Robin Graubard, The Hold Up, Installation View
Robin Graubard, The Hold Up, Installation View
Robin Graubard, soundofwaves. Digital slide show