Exhibition

Rauschenberg: Collecting & Connecting is installed in eight thematic sections: 1. Black and White (with Red): Variations on the Monochrome; 2. North Carolina and Italy: Rauschenberg’s Photographs, 1949–52; 3. Rock Paper Scissors: Materiality, Process, Society; 4. Light, Mirror, and Mirage: Capturing Ephemeral Nature; 5. Auditions in the Carnal House: Picturing Eroticism; 6. Soviet/American Array: Part I, Politics and Friendships; 7. Soviet/American Array: Part II, Cacophony of Cultures; and 8. Bruce Conner One Man Show (with Rauschenberg): A Visual Dialogue.

Descriptive texts are accompanied by a sampling of works from each section. A complete illustrated exhibition checklist and installation photography are also available for viewing.

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Rock Paper Scissors: Materiality, Process, Society

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Auditions in the Carnal House: Picturing Eroticism

Light, Mirror, and Mirage: Capturing Ephemeral Nature

The physical and metaphysical conditions of light have preoccupied imagination throughout time. Light reflected on water may have provided the earliest mirror, followed by polished stone, then silvered glass, and finally synthetic materials like plastic. Bent light, together with atmospheric effects, produces the mirroring phenomenon of mirage, an illusion of the existence of the nonexistent. This paradox is not unlike the variegated ways that the psyche transforms impressions in a mirror.

Capturing the ephemeral properties of nature in representational form has always preoccupied and challenged artists. The works in this section attend to the optical refraction of light through fabric, metal, neon, and photographic exposure.


The function of art is to make you look . . . into your own life—see the secrets that are in the shadows, or in the way the light falls somewhere.
— Robert Rauschenberg

« Previous Section
Rock Paper Scissors: Materiality, Process, Society

Next Section »
Auditions in the Carnal House: Picturing Eroticism