Rena Bransten Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Oakland, CA and Florence, Italy based artist Robert Minervini. This is our fourth solo exhibition with the artist.
Minervini’s work revels in intoxicating color palettes and precisely rendered forms, with keen attention to balance and bringing the depth of the three-dimensional world to the two-dimensional picture plane. His work depicts a “new naturalism” – one that is tethered to the rich traditions of western painting, while making connections with contemporary ideas about beauty and the sublime. The overall effect is a welcoming one, and evokes a desire to step inside his paintings and stay awhile.
Formally, the works focus on interior and exterior spaces; objects and plants populate the foreground while California landscapes and cityscapes stretch out through the window behind them. While congruent with past work and an interest in built environments, the new paintings are intrinsically linked with the circumstances of the recent years in which they were made: the wildfires in Northern California, long periods of time spent in isolation due to the pandemic, and the artist having relocated to a new home abroad. The title of the exhibition L’Attesa, which translates to “the waiting,” points to the artist’s experiences during this time, punctuated by feelings of anxiety, moments of calm, but most markedly by the in-between-ness of waiting. One wonders, waiting for what? The collapse of climate, the end of the pandemic, a day without an orange sky? The works hinge on the possibility of the future and the anxiety of the present, wondering simply: what comes next?
Robert Minervini received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, and his BFA from Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, PA. His work has been exhibited nationally, including shows at the San José Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, and the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art. He has completed multiple murals and public art commissions nationally including through the San Francisco Arts Commission, among others. He has been a resident artist at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, the Headlands Center of the Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center. His work has been reviewed in the LA Times, Modern Painters, San Francisco Chronicle, Art ltd., and featured in ArtWeek LA, 7×7 Magazine, and The Huffington Post, and is included in multiple private and public collections including the San José Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, the City and County of San Francisco.
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