Dario Robleto

Dario Robleto
Born	1972
Occupation	artist

Dario Robleto (born 1972) is an American multidisciplinary artist, storyteller, and “citizen-scientist”. His research-driven practice results in intricately handcrafted objects that reflect his exploration of music, popular culture, science, war, and American history. He is currently represented by Inman Gallery in Houston, Praz-Delavallade in Paris, and ACME. in Los Angeles.

Early Life and Education

Robleto was born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1972 and he received his BFA from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 1997.

Work

Robleto uses unexpected materials such as melted vinyl records, dinosaur bones, meteorites, glass produced by atomic explosions, lost heartbeat recordings from the 19th century, and he transforms these artifacts from the vast inventory of humanity’s collective past into delicately layered objects that are sincere and personal meditations on love, death, eroding memory, and healing.

A self-described “materialist poet,” Robleto emphasizes the relationship between language and materials as a crucial component to his approach. “Liner notes,” usually in the form of a wall label, accompany many of the works, poetically detailing the sources embedded therein. A great appreciator of DJ culture, and a former DJ himself, Robleto considers his work a mixtape or “sampling” of humanity; he remixes forgotten stories and materials and reconstructs them into new artistic forms as a lens to view the future through the past.

Increasingly, Robleto has been participating in activities outside the art world. In 2015 he was appointed Artist in Residence in Neuroaesthetics at the University of Houston's Cullen College of Engineering, and he was invited to participate in the 2016 International Conference on Mobile Brain-Body Imaging and the Neuroscience of Art, Innovation, and Creativity. Scheduled to take place in July 2016, Robleto and University of Houston professor Jose Contreras-Vidal will co-chair a discussion on the topic "How the creative arts and aesthetic experiences engage the human mind and promote creativity and innovation.” Robleto will also participate in a panel discussion on the topic "Science from the eye of the artist: How art-science collaborations can engage the public and facilitate discourse.” In 2015 Robleto and Contreras-Vidal coauthored a scholarly paper titled "Your Brain on Art: Emergent Cortical Dynamics During Aesthetic Experiences”. The study considered “the brain response to conceptual art [as] studied with mobile electroencephalography (EEG) to examine the neural basis of aesthetic experiences.”

Robleto has also participated in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. He is currently one of five artists in the founding group of Artists-in-Residence at the prestigious SETI Institute in Mountain View, CA, and in 2015 he joined a distinguished team of scientists as the artistic consultant on the Breakthrough Initiatives, which is the most comprehensive search ever attempted in finding scientific evidence of life in the Universe.

Exhibitions

The artist has had numerous solo exhibitions since 1997, most recently at the Menil Collection, Houston, TX (2014); the Baltimore Museum of Art (2014); the New Orleans Museum of Art (2012); and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver (2011). In 2008 a 10-year survey exhibition, Alloy of Love, was organized by the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York. Accompanied by a major monograph, Alloy of Love traveled to the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, Washington. Notable group shows include Nouveau Festival 5th Edition, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2014); The Record/ Contemporary Art and Vinyl, Nasher Museum of Art, Durham (2011); Old, Weird, America, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (2008); Human/Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (2008); and Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2004).

Teaching and Lecturing

Robleto has been a visiting artist and lecturer at many universities and institutions including Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA; and the Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD. In 2013 he was appointed the California College of the Arts Viola Frey Distinguished Visiting Professor, Oakland, CA.

Awards and Recognitions

Awards have included the International Association of Art Critics Award in 2004 for best exhibition in a commercial gallery at the national level and recipient of both the 2007 Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant and the 2009 USA Rasmuson Fellowship. He has been a research fellow and resident at institutions such as the Menil Collection (2014); Rice University (2013-14); and the Smithsonian Museum of American History (2011). In 2015 he joined a distinguished team of scientists as the artistic consultant on the Breakthrough Initiatives—the most comprehensive search ever attempted at finding scientific evidence of life in the Universe. He is currently serving as an Artist-in-Residence in Neuroaesthetics at the University of Houston’s Cullen College of Engineering and as part of the founding group of Artists-in-Residence at the prestigious SETI Institute in Mountain View, CA. He was recently appointed as the 2016 Texas State Artist Laureate. Robleto currently sits on the Board of Directors of Artpace.

Robleto has participated in many residencies including the Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA, in 2014; and Artpace, San Antonio, TX, in 2004.

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2014

• Setlists For a Setting Sun, The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD
• The Boundary of Life is Quietly Crossed, The Menil Collection, Houston, TX

2012

• The Prelives of the Blues, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA

2011

• Survival Does Not Lie in the Heavens, Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA
• An Instinct Toward Life, Denver Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, CO

2008

• Alloy of Love, The Francis Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY; traveled to the Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA

2006

• Chrysanthemum Anthems, Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC; traveled to Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN

2003

• Say Goodbye to Substance, Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, New York, NY

Selected Group Exhibitions

2016

• Explode Every Day: An Inquiry into the Phenomena of Wonder, MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA (forthcoming May 2016)
• Southern Accent: Seeking the American South in Contemporary Art, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC (forthcoming Fall 2016)

2013

• MORE LOVE ART, POLITICS, and SHARING Since the 1990s, Ackland Museum of Art, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC; traveled to Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art, Nashville, TN

2010

• The Record: Contemporary ART and VINYL, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC; traveled to Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; Miami Art Museum, Miami, FL; Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, WA

2004

• 2004 Biennial Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Selected Residencies

2014

• Headlands Center for the Arts Artist in Residence, Sausalito, CA

2000

• Artpace, San Antonio, TX

Selected Public collections

• Albright–Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY
• Altoids Curiously Strong Collection/New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY
• Austin Museum of Art, Austin, TX
• Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, New York, NY
• Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA
• Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC
• Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin, TX
• Le Centre d'Art Contemporain, Montpellier, France
• Linda Pace Foundation, San Antonio, TX
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
• Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA
• Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC
• New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA
• The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD
• The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY
• The Menil Collection, Houston, TX
• The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
• Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, Wichita, KS
• Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Selected Catalogues

• Dirge: Reflections on [Life and Death], Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, Cleaveland, OH (2014)
• Art and Alchemy: The Mystery of Transformation, Munich, Germany (2014)
• The House of the Seven Gables, University Galleries of Illinois State University, Normal, IL (2014)
• MORE LOVE, ART, POLITICS, and SHARING Since the 1990s. Chapel Hill, NC: Ackland Art Museum (2014)
• 110 Favorites from the Collection, The University of Texas Press, Austin, TX (2013)
• Disembodied: Portrait Miniatures and Their Contemporary Relatives, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (2013)
• Dario Robleto: Prelives of the Blues, New Orleans Museum of Art (2012)
• MO/RE/RE/AL? Art In The Age of Truthiness, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN (2012)
• An Instinct Toward Life, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (2011)
• Spectacular of Vernacular, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN (2011)
• Dario Robleto: Survival Does Not Lie In The Heavens, Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA (2011)
• The Record: Contemporary ART and VINYL, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC (2010)
• Alloy of Love, Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Saratoga Springs, NY (2008)
• The Old, Weird America: Folk Themes in Contemporary Art, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX (2008)
• Human/Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (2008)
• Chrysanthemum Anthems, The Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC (2007)

External links

• Dario Robleto
• Dario Robleto at Inman Gallery
• Dario Robleto at ACME
• Dario Robleto on artnet.com
• “Space”, Radiolab, Season 2, Episode 5, New York Public Radio
• "Dario Robleto: Sculptor of Memory”, On Being with Krista Tippett, APM