Levi Robb
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Printing ink on Japanese paper
Location:
First Floor, front lobby near Materials Return
Levi Robb grew up on a small farm in Southeast Iowa, surrounded by vast expanses of space, dense timberland and the Mississippi River. This agrarian environment played an important role in shaping him as an artist and designer, and the way he visually sees and perceives surroundings. This vernacular has stimulated his obsession with scale, furthermore, how scale can be shifted and manipulated within a painting, print, drawing or sculpture. Robb’s 2D work aims to evolve into substance that is sculptural in nature through the exploration of material, space, and repetition.
He writes, “My current work is less about a single object or image and rather how the eye reacts to a certain surface, pattern or texture within a particular space. I seek to create work that acts as a visual catalyst for something else, caught in a place somewhere between the real and the perceived, a visual portal to the viewer’s raw imagination. I use the practices of painting, drawing and printmaking to layer media until arriving at a pleasing accumulation. I am interested in creating work that has its own gravitational pulse, in a way, an abstraction or mirage that juxtaposes the man-made and the natural, revealing detail as it pulls the viewer closer. Ultimately bringing one to a comfortable aesthetic limbo within time and space.”
Robb has bachelor’s degree in Architecture from Iowa State University and has spent periods of time living in the Southwest United States and Rome, Italy. His work has been exhibited in New York City and throughout the Midwest.