Exhibition - Robin Roi: "Coming Apart"

Opening Reception: Saturday, March 30, 2024, 4 - 6 pm
Artist Talk: Sunday, April 14, 4:40 pm

440 Gallery is pleased to present Coming Apart, a solo exhibition of mixed media on paper by Robin Roi. These provocative works showcase patterns selected from the artist's collection of vintage wallpapers that are layered with imagery from the originating tale of Adam and Eve. This is Roi’s second solo show at the gallery.

Roi’s collection Coming Apart calls back to the biblical story of God creating human life. In the beginning, there was an androgynous being, male/female, “Whole and One”.

Vintage wallpapers mark the conception of these works. Backed by a rigid canvas, they are layered with other collage materials, acrylic paint and drawings. Though some of the work has been framed, Roi has eliminated the confines of a rectangle for select pieces, leaving them free-form with a "live edge."

Cut the Apple in Half, whose title references the Solomonic parable of cutting the baby in half, is an elegant collage of patterned papers and delicate drawings of the Garden of Eden. There, behind a veil of beauty, Roi camouflages her message of turmoil and divide. It is one moment past the androgynous being split into two. In contrast to the biblical story, this composition reveals Adam as the one who tempts Eve with the dangerous fruit. This role-reversal taunts the view that sin is innately feminine. Making Adam the tempter tests the trustworthiness of the tale that has filtered down to us — the tale that continues to color our lives and in Roi’s words, “what remains.”

Roi writes, “This exhibition asks the viewer to engage with the story in a new way — to take what is so overtly familiar that it has become invisible and examine how it continues to influence and shape our world.”

Roi has been a painter and designer since receiving her BFA in printmaking at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and her MFA in painting at Claremont Graduate University in California. For several years, she was active in the Pattern and Decoration movement and was represented by Barbara Gladstone Gallery in New York City and Bruno Bischofberger in Switzerland.

She worked at the Drawing Center, the American Crafts Museum and the Heller Gallery before becoming the Director of Decorative Painting with EverGreene Architectural Arts in NYC for 32 years. Her fine arts background and passion for the decorative arts were a perfect marriage for the position. Since retiring from EverGreene in 2015, she has focused on her own studio practice, working primarily with mixed media on paper. Roi has exhibited work throughout the U.S. and has been a member of 440 Gallery since 2020.