Robert Minervini

Published in Panhandler Issue 5

Robert Minervini works in painting, installation, sculpture, and site-specific public art. Primarily a painter, his work is based on the intersection of nature and culture. He received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2009, and his BFA from Tyler School of Art in 2005. His work has been exhibited nationally, including Marine Contemporary Art Salon, Eleanor Harwood Gallery, 941 Geary Gallery, Verge Gallery, Manifest Gallery, The Brooklyn Historical Society, the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, the Luggage Store Gallery, the Pennsylvania State Museum, and the Philadelphia Art Alliance. He has been awarded the Murphy/Cadogan Fellowship by the San Francisco Foundation in 2008, the Edwin Austin Abbey Mural Fellowship by the National Academy of Fine Arts in 2008, and the Carmela Corso Scholarship by Tyler School of Art in 2005. He has been a resident artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Root Division Studio Program in San Francisco. His work has been published in New American Painting No.91, Mural Art: Large Scale Art from Walls Around the World, and SF Gate, amongst others. He is represented by Marine Contemporary in Santa Monica and currently lives and works in San Francisco California. More of his work can be viewed at robertminervini.com.

Artist’s Statement

The word “Utopia” originates from the literal Greek meaning “not place,” suggesting that perfection can only exist in the realm of imagination. My work presents invented spaces that are based on reality, but revel in artificiality. In these desolate dreamlike non-places, I subvert nature and construct or destroy architectural sites alluding to the making of a utopian and/or dystopian environment.