Homecoming: Art by Alumni is a group exhibition highlighting diverse visual art practices of nine accomplished artists and alumni from Davidson College, including Stuart Robertson. The exhibition recognizes each alum’s individual explorations while also highlighting a common thread: an emphasis on the visibility and physicality of the artist’s hand. Drawing on practices that rely on seeking, selecting, composing, arranging, and manipulating, the works presented — photographs, sculptures, paintings, digital art, and mixed-media works — evoke a tangible connection to and deep reliance on process and materials in support of each artist’s unique conceptual ideas.
In a series of ten square works varying in size, Robertson presents mixed-media portraits of friends or family members, each titled with the sitter’s first name and last initial. In each portrait, the sitter smiles widely, their joy emphasized by bright colors and patterns, as well as glitter. Through his use of varied, often colorful or patterned fabric, Robertson intends to “complicate the concept of skin color as race.” Four additional paintings depict cropped areas of male torsos atop brightly colored backgrounds. Aluminum sheeting defines and highlights areas of the bodies. In this series, intentional cropping of the figures creates ambiguity; for example, are the figures embracing in affection, or are they grappling?
Learn more at davidsoncollegeartgalleries.org
