Biography

Robin Clark’s work combines intellectual subtlety and powerful visual intrigue. Questions about power and symbology, the character and history of the United States, and the relationship between the contemporary art world and its market are embedded in his work. Clark’s most recent project involves currency with delicately scraped away surfaces. Like elusive poems, the remains of images and words–a blankly staring face, a single chair, two trees –hover in the suggestively denuded surrounding space. Along with these “erasures,” Clark exhibits vials containing the powdery ink from the scraped surfaces; the familiarity of our daily currency made strange. In other works, he draws on collaged ghostly bills using only the scraped currency ink as pigments.

Though his last fifteen years and more have been devoted to art, Clark began his career as a filmmaker. He studied with Hollywood writer/director Abraham Polonsky, and received a BA in Film Direction from San Francisco State University. Among many other venues his work has been shown at the Cannes Film Festival and Sundance Film Festival. Robin Clark’s currency works have been exhibited in museums across the country, from LACMA to Washington, D.C. He lives and works in Virginia.