David Robbins Ice Cream Social

9782940271559

2940271550

After David Robbins achieved art-world success with his exhibition Talent in 1986, in which he reimagined Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, and Richard Prince as entertainers, he became disenchanted with the New York scene and returned to his hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There, he began to pursue performance art and dot painting in the context of the small-town tradition of the ice-cream social. The first social was held at a local Baskin-Robbins. For it, the artist used the company's trademark pink and brown logo colors in his work.. Over the following decade, he expanded the project into live events in other cities (complete with free ice cream), a TV pilot, and a feature movie script. These derivations, together with digital designs presented here and a novella from 1998, map the full extent of this idiosyncratic exhibition model, in which Robbins seeks to extend "art context attitudes" and experimentation into the mainstream. A pioneer in this regard, he has inspired other artists, like Pierre Huyghe in this direction.