Dana Robinson: In Celebration of Excellence and The Ordinary

About

This exhibition presents two distinct bodies of work by Robinson. One body of work includes collaged cutouts of stylized vintage Ebony magazine advertisements. The cutout imagery are specific signifiers of consumer fantasies advertised to the growing Black middle class in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. The paintings capture an exploded field of nostalgic commercial products, disembodied Black figures, and abstract paint globs. Robinson begs the question why must the current generation exclusively aspire for Black exceptionalism, why can’t one also celebrate the quotidian, the everyday in depictions of a utopian Black life.

In her second body of work, Robinson employs a two-part abstraction process. The artist lays transparency paper over “before and after” makeover photos from Ebony Fashion Fair profiles. She then applies loose and thick layers of acrylic paint to make a quick overlay of Black female faces. Lastly, she places the transparency face down onto a pre-stained wooden panel to create an abstracted monoprint of the original painting. The result is a colorful, goopy, textured abstraction of each visage surrounded by vintage cracker jack charms.

Dana Robinson (b.1990, Brooklyn)
Dana Robinson is a Brooklyn based multimedia artist. She earned her BFA in Design from Florida State University in 2012 and her MFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2019.

Robinson has amassed a vast body of work throughout her career, utilizing a variety of materials such as fabric, paint, vintage materials, and other found objects to investigate questions of Blackness, womanhood, and ownership. Conversations of Dana Robinson’s eclectic collection have been covered by publications such as Vice, Ain’t-Bad, NY Mag’s Vulture, and It’s Nice That.

Since 2008, Robinson has exhibited her work in more than 70 shows across the United States and abroad. Most recently, Robinson took part in 2 online exhibitions, Future Fair with Selenas Mountain, and the Wassaic Project Holiday Fair, and Last Supper at LatchKey Gallery in Soho. She has had shows at Selenas Mountain, Queens, NY and Specialist Gallery, Seattle, WA in 2021 Robinson will also be an artist in residence at Stoneleaf Retreat in 2021, and the Wassaic Project in 2022.