Robert Gilson “Entering China”

Weill Art Gallery/ 92nd Y

poster for Robert Gilson “Entering China”

This event has ended.

Robert Gilson started taking photographs when he was a child and never stopped – his 28-year career directing arts programs at 92nd Street Y notwithstanding. From January 12 to February 27, 92Y presents “Entering China,” Gilson’s first exhibit of photographs in 30 years. The show takes place in the same gallery where Gilson presented more than 100 exhibitions including one-person shows with Julia Calfee, Bruce Davidson, James Estrin, Rachel Papo, Aaron Siskind and Andy Warhol, among many others. Gilson served as Director of what is now 92Y’s Gilda and Henry Block School of the Arts. He retired from 92Y in 2015.

Gilson grew up on a farm in Vermont, and credits the summer road trips he took with his single mother as the inspiration his earliest photography. “When I was about 10 years old, we passed through China, Maine,” Gilson recalls in his artist’s statement for the exhibit. “I insisted that we stop so I could have my picture taken in front of a road sign that read: Entering China. In retrospect, this photograph represents the birth of my photographic career in that it contains many of the elements of my current work: text, humor, irony, travel, self-portraiture, and the landscape.”

The photographs in this show have been selected from three large, ongoing bodies of work: photographs that document human interventions in rural and urban landscapes; images that chronicle amusing events in the art world; and pictures from a series called Fundamental that takes a humorous look at religion in America. While humor is not the sole focus of his photographs, he is drawn to the intersection between the beautiful and the absurd.

Gilson earned an MFA in photography from the Program in Photographic Studies at the Visual Studies Workshop in 1981, at the time a satellite program of SUNY Buffalo. Prior to joining 92Y, Gilson was Director of Special Programs in Art at Skidmore College, and Director of Fine and Applied Arts at the Chautauqua Institution.

Robert Gilson is on Instagram at robertgilsonphotography

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Schedule

from January 12, 2017 to February 27, 2017

Opening Reception on 2017-01-17 from 17:00 to 19:00

Artist(s)

Robert Gilson

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