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, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the Sundance Film Festival. Robin Clark’s currency works have been exhibited in museums across the country, from LACMA to the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C.

In recent years, Clark’s early film work and collaboration with Doris Fish have become the subject of renewed critical and cultural interest. His role in the making of Vegas in Space is discussed extensively in Craig Seligman’s book Who Does That Bitch Think She Is?, particularly in its later chapters addressing the film and Fish’s final years. The book has since been optioned for adaptation by Jonathan Fernandez and Marty Sokol, with a screenplay in development by Michael Verrati and Joshua Grannell. In parallel, Clark appears throughout the forthcoming documentary Dear Doris, directed by Scott Braucht and Academy Award nominee Janique Robilliard, which examines Fish’s life, work, and legacy and is scheduled for release in 2026.

Clark lives and works in the U.S.