Robert Rauschenberg
Sympathy for Abandoned Objects
Gladstone Gallery, New York
May 1 - June 14, 2025
Presented in collaboration with the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation on the occasion of the artist’s Centennial, Gladstone presents the first survey of Rauschenberg’s sculptural practice in thirty years, spanning his production from the 1950s through the late 1990s.
Examining Rauschenberg’s sculptures through the lens of scale, the exhibition showcases over 30 sculptures that relate in size to the human body, whether floor-, pedestal-, or wall-based. Drawing from myriad media and disrupting the distinction between abstraction and empirical representation, Rauschenberg's sculptures are rooted in his career-long dedication to artistic experimentation.
Robert Rauschenberg is renowned for blurring the line between artistic genres, painterly gesture, and three-dimensionality. The artist maintained a robust sculptural practice throughout his long and prodigious career. Underscoring the artist’s remarkable use of found and readymade materials, the works on view are assembled from industrial detritus, everyday objects, decorative items, and organic forms. They are the result of improvisatory gestures—gathering, twisting, combining, adhering, tying—that Rauschenberg described as responses to items found in his environment, “treasures” that he would bring back to his studio, seeing in them a potential for new form. Claiming a “sympathy for abandoned objects,” he created a body of strictly sculptural work that is rarely presented as such.
For this exhibition, Gladstone presents key works from various series, including the Scatole Personali (1952–53), Elemental Sculptures (1953/59), Combines (1954-64), Kabal American Zephyrs (1981– 83/1985/1987–88), Gluts (1986–89/1991–94), and the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange (ROCI; 1984–91) in an installation designed by Selldorf Architects to reveal the continuity of his unique vocabulary within an expansive set of sculptural positions. Given Rauschenberg’s protean imagination, this exhibition also features a number of his sculptures that were not aligned with specific series and exist on their own formal terms. Key loans from institutional and private collections augment the selection of work from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation to further argue for the artist’s keen sculptural sensibility, even if he resisted aligning himself with one medium. This exhibition traces the trajectory of Rauschenberg’s creative output as a whole, with the three-dimensional objects serving as key touchpoints in an expansive and almost uncategorizable oeuvre. The last survey of Rauschenberg’s purely sculptural output prior to this show was in 1995 at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
This exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue designed by Chris Svensson with an essay by sculpture expert, Lisa Le Feuvre, Executive Director of the Holt/Smithson Foundation, entries on each of the individual sculptural series represented, and detailed exhibition histories.
In 2025, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation commemorates Robert Rauschenberg’s 100th birthday with an international celebration of the artist’s expansive creativity, spirit of curiosity, and commitment to change.
ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG
Born on October 22, 1925 in Port Arthur, Texas, Robert Rauschenberg worked in what he called the gap between art and life. Over the course of his sixty-year career, Rauschenberg’s art embodied a spirit of experimentation with new materials and techniques. Dubbed an enfant terrible for his assemblages of urban detritus (the Combines of 1954-64), Robert Rauschenberg continued exploring many different mediums and technological advancements in the years following his 1970 decampment to Captiva Island in the Gulf of Mexico, off the Florida coast.
Although he demurred from affiliations with any particular movement, he has been called a forerunner of essentially every postwar artistic development since Abstract Expressionism.
In addition to his own artmaking practice, Robert Rauschenberg became an advocate for artists and the creative community at large. In September 1970, he founded Change, Inc., a non-profit organization that helped artists with emergency expenses. From 1984-91, he personally funded the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange (ROCI), traveling to ten countries outside of the United States to spark cross-cultural dialogue through art.
Robert Rauschenberg died on May 12, 2008 in his Captiva studio. His artistic legacy and his lifelong commitment to collaboration with artists, performers, writers, artisans, and engineers worldwide was recognized long before his death. His expansive artistic philosophy lives on through his highly innovative and influential work to the present day.
About the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation builds on the legacy of artist Robert Rauschenberg, emphasizing his belief that artists can drive social change. Robert Rauschenberg sought to act in the “gap” between art and life, valuing chance and collaboration across disciplines. As such, the Foundation celebrates new and even untested ways of thinking.
GLADSTONE GALLERY
530 West 21st Street, New York City
