Robert Whitman - Sculpture and Installations

Sculpture and Installations

He has collaborated with engineers on installations and works that incorporate new technology: laser sculptures, including Solid Red Line, in which a red line draws itself around the walls of a room and then erases itself; Pon, a sound-activated metallized PET film mirror installation shown at The Jewish Museum in New York in 1969.

His long collaboration with optics scientist John Forkner began with a mirror, light and sound installation for the Art and Technology exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1971. They developed an optical system that allowed real images to float in space, to appear and disappear in an environment made up of a wall array of 6-inch corner reflectors in which the visitors saw multiple images of themselves.

Whitman was one of the co-founders of Experiments in Art and Technology along with engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer and artist Robert Rauschenberg - a project to provide contemporary artists with access to new technology as it developed in research institutions and laboratories. Whitman was one of the core artists for the Pepsi Pavilion at Expo '70, Osaka Japan, a project administered by E.A.T. One of the main features of the interior of the Pavilion was the central performance space in a 90 ft diameter 120 degree spherical mirror made of aluminized reflective PET film, which produced real images of the visitors hanging upside down in space.

Significant one-person exhibitions of Whitman's sculpture and installation pieces include shows at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Hudson River Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and Thielska Galleriet, Stockholm. Whitman has had one person gallery exhibitions at PaceWildenstein in New York, and has been included in many group exhibitions.