Walter Robinson. Spin, 2008; wood, epoxy, steel, and metal flake; 52 x 26 x 22 in. Collection of Donald Kushner. Courtesy of the Palo Alto Art Center.

Something about the cheery, bright colors in Walter Robinson’s work evokes the dreamy pleasures of childhood at the same time that it plunges us into adult-size recognition of the eternal recurrence of human fallibility. Some of the most provocative and moving art of our time calls up such a mix of emotions by drawing on the deep—some would say scarring—imprint of early memory. As Claes Oldenburg put it when asked about the source of his inspiration, “I made it up when I was a little kid.”

Robinson’s artistic forebears are an interesting group. His strategies often include the manipulation of scale, which can be traced to René Magritte, Oldenburg, and Robert Gober, and a Pop-inflected appropriation of bits of consumer culture, invoking the (sometimes) ambivalent relationship to the religion of capitalism/consumption that lies at the heart of American life and art. The importance of facture in Robinson’s work—of the manner in which it is made, with consummate skill and careful consideration of material and method to convey the intended ideas—demonstrates the artist’s relationship to “maker-uncles” such as Richard Artschwager and Allan McCollum. Additionally, Robinson’s affinity for words suggests alliances with text/image “cousins” Jenny Holzer and Barbara Bloom, or the Bay Area conceptualist branch of the family: William T. Wiley, Richard Shaw, Bruce Conner.

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Walter Robinson. Exodus, 2014; Wood, fiberglass, taxidermy, glass, leather, sand
75 x 63 x 20 in. Courtesy Catharine Clark Gallery.

What are we to think about an Egyptian funerary boat powered by oars, piled improbably high with miniature, candy-colored shipping containers? San Francisco artist Walter Robinson has become well known for this kind of humorous, slightly disturbing disjuncture: a combination of conceptually and visually loaded elements, exquisitely realized and presented as a fait accompli. The title of Robinson’s solo show, Sic Transit Gloria Mundi, unites a vivid group of paintings, sculpture, and unsettlingly surreal installations. Loosely translated, this Latin phrase means “Thus passes the glory of the world,” reminding us not only of the fleeting nature of our existence here on earth, but that, as Douglas Huebler once said, “Things are only things.” Despite what the ancient Egyptians believed, we can’t take them with us when we go.

Robinson is a skilled maker, creating seamless combinations of ingenious, highly crafted parts and found materials (historically, there have been less of the latter, more of the former). This show represents a departure in that more than half of the pieces shown are two-dimensional canvases, painted in the handsomely idiosyncratic palette that has characterized his work for decades. The themes of these pictures include clowns, pets, and a variety of bucolic landscapes, based on motifs taken from paint-by-number images popular in Robinson’s childhood.

In a spectacular series representing the four seasons, these themes are combined in ways that can only be described as somewhere between humorously dreamy and nightmarish (depending, of course, on how you feel about clowns). In Four Seasons (Winter) (2013), an Emmett Kelly look-alike in the foreground gazes pensively into the distance, while skaters skim across the ice behind him, their faces simplified to robotic dots. In the panel that represents spring, a geisha wanders across a bridge behind a different mournful red-nosed figure.

Rather than alluding to the seasons as a one-way journey, representing the ages of man, these pictures seem more to be reminders of the cyclical passage of time. The wheel goes around, year after year, though we can witness it only so many times. The centerpiece of the show, Exodus (2014), is an amalgam of memento mori: a saddled warthog-cum-pack-mule carrying a giant (functional!) hourglass, one hoof embedded in a human skull. The exodus referred to is not only Robinson’s own imminent, lamentable departure from the Bay Area, it is the steady loss of members of the creative class who can no longer afford to live here.

Walter Robinson: Sic Transit Gloria Mundi is on view at Catharine Clark Gallery through March 29, 2014.

Maria Porges is an artist and writer whose critical writing has appeared in many publications, including Artforum, Art in America, Sculpture, American Ceramics, Glass, and a host of other now-defunct art magazines. An Associate Professor at California College of the Arts in the Graduate Program in Fine Arts, she likes to topiarize unsuspecting shrubbery and read out loud.