Hong Kong’s De Sarthe Gallery explores five decades of the career of Pop pioneer Robert Rauschenberg through six works on display at the gallery from May 26 through July 2.What unites these works is that they all use transferring techniques, a signature of much of Rauschenberg’s work where he transfers photographs onto his work. In these six works, gallery visitors can see the artist refining these techniques to create transfers of increasing complexity, while staying true to his initial project of using transfer to critique traditional definitions of drawing, painting and photography.In the earliest work in the exhibition, “Bryce Baby,” 1968, he uses solvent transfer (in which an image is applied to the work’s surface, covered in a solvent and then burnished to transfer the image from its original paper) to create a minimalist collage similar to many of his white paintings with its use of found photographs and text. The work also brings attention to the transfer process used, with the word “Big” appearing backwards.In the next work from the 1990s, Rauschenberg’s use of the process has developed with the artist now able to transfer in color by working straight from the photographic negatives with dyes. In “Stretch [Anagrams (A Pun)],” 1998, the artist uses this essentially photographic process to blur medium boundaries by using it to transfer a photographed drawing. Characteristically, the artist uses vegetable dyes reflecting his ecological activism.The other four works, which come from the decade prior to the artist’s death in 2008, see him using pigment transfer (using acrylic paint in place of solvents) to transfer detailed photographs of American life as Rauschenberg saw it, bringing a theme that had fascinated the artist throughout his career to a culmination.“Robert Rauschenberg” runs May 26-July 2 at De Sarthe Gallery, Hong Kong
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