Basel Social Club -Walter Robinson
16 – 21 June 2025
Rittergasse 21-25
CH-4051 Basel
Opening reception: Sunday, 15, 2 pm - midnight
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Sébastien Bertrand is pleased to participate in Basel Social Club with a selection of works from the Dollars Paintings series by the late Walter Robinson (1950 - 2025) “Perhaps even more effective than a critical retort is stacks of money. Walter Robinson’s Stacks (2020) seems to pile up right against the moralism of critics like Craig Owens, not to mention the Pictures Generation in general. And there have been other such images, seemingly lauding the excesses of Capitalism. But this is not to say such images are not being offered up, on a proverbial silver platter or “in a sink”, with more than a modicum of irony. After all, it is not like Robinson himself, as an artist, has made ‘stacks’ over the years, even during the good ones. And this certainly seems like a good one. Whereas many of the Pictures artists seem to be doing quite well – irony of ironies, which is another kind of stack. The fact that these stacks of cash are tied into bundles with string adds the further complication that all such accumulations of money and wealth usually involves ‘strings’ or bondage of some sort. In the process of this kindof grotesque accumulation, do we not also become slaves to the very thing we imagine will bring us ultimate freedom and happiness? But, on the other hand, not having ‘stacks’, even small ones, does not mean a life of deprivation will bring those things (happiness and freedom, if not success). But Robinson, as usual, is winking at us, and telling us he knows what is going on in the world of money and art – after all, so many of the Weekend Updates he wrote for Artnet, and various texts for other magazines, took for their subject the auction houses and the art market, in general. As the ultimate arbiter of critical pleasures, he could not but delight in the ridiculous figures the auction houses ‘cut’, along with galleries, collectors, museums, and artists as well" - W.R.
2025
Pencil on paper
28.5 x 19.5 cm. / 11 ¼ x 7 ¾ in.
TL-2521