Robert Szot: The Picturesque Survival Of Other Days

Anita Rogers Gallery is pleased to present The Picturesque Survival of Other Days, Robert Szot’s third solo exhibition with the gallery, and his largest to date. This new body of work includes the artist’s most ambitious painting : a 74”x 100” diptych, which serves as the focal point of this new collection. The exhibition will be on view September 10 through November 9 at 494 Greenwich Street, Ground Floor in New York City. The gallery will host an opening reception with the artist on Tuesday, September 10, 6-8pm. 

 For Szot’s nearly two-and-a-half-decade long career, the artist has been known for taking risks in his work – this feels more evident now than ever. This new work appears spontaneous and intuitive, yet the canvases reveal a rigorous process marked by countless hours in the studio and constant editing. After nearly twenty years in Brooklyn, the artist now maintains studios in both Los Angeles and in New York. The West Coast landscape makes its way into the new work – lavish blue hues show up in many of the compositions, complemented by earthy browns, tans, and golds. The new work carries on the artist’s arresting authorship but also forges new paths forward – it is the hard-won work of an artist who pulls harmony from chaos and offers rich, everchanging stories to those discerning viewers who take the time to truly look. 

 The artist has a deep reverence for history and the artists that have come before him. This love of history carries into his process. He has always worked with traditional mediums – oil paints, linen, charcoal, paper – and recently, he has added goldleaf, a material that dates back to the art of ancient religious iconography and German Expressionism at the turn of the 20th Century. The addition of the metal to both his paintings and his works on paper marks an unchartered exploration for the artist; it allows new relationships to happen both within the painting, and with the exterior world. Szot’s paintings are stories, unfolding before us in the artist’s particular language, a language that evolves as he does, and as the world around him does. This new series of work is deeply personal, dynamic, and encompassing – in the same painting, a view can find gentle shifts, delicate transparencies, monumental forms, and layer upon layer of rich storytelling. 

In the two years that have passed since Special Music, the artist’s last New York City solo exhibition, Szot has pushed his work to new depths, in terms of color, process, composition, and methodology.  

Szot (b. 1976) has exhibited his work in many galleries across the United States from New York to Los Angeles and Texas. Szot's paintings have been exhibited in the Saatchi Gallery in London and, in 2014, the artist was invited to participate in the Whitney Museum Art Party. His work is in public collections, including Credit Suisse, and numerous private collections, such as Beth DeWoody and the Bass Family. The artist currently lives and works in both Los Angeles, CA and Brooklyn, NY.  

For further information and photographs, please contact Elizabeth Thompson at elizabeth.thompson@anitarogersgallery.com, or call 347.604.2346. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday 10am – 6pm.