Upcoming Exhibitions

This summer, the Taft debuts an annual exhibition of work by an emerging contemporary artist. The Keystone Contemporary series begins July 31 with Cincinnati native Emil Robinson, whose paintings serve as contemplations on daily life. The four new paintings, which have never been exhibited, will make their premiere at the Taft.

In Robinson’s work, mundane objects and private moments take on new meaning and express profound, quiet beauty. For this artist, the methodical process of painting itself is a meditation that is reenacted when viewers experience the finished image.

In his new body of work, Robinson has placed meticulously rendered figures against geometric backgrounds. This juxtaposition of realism versus pure pattern reveals the magic of painting—we see what appear to be volumetric forms but are simultaneously reminded that a painting is a two-dimensional surface.

By working within, and subverting, the traditional genre of portraiture, Robinson also lends a new perspective on portraits in the Taft collection, such as 17th-century Dutch painter Frans Hals’s pendant portraits of a husband and wife.

Robinson graduated with a master of fine arts degree from the University of Cincinnati in 2006 and a bachelor of arts from Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, in 2003. In 2007, he received a grant from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, a Canadian organization that supports emerging representational artists from around the world. The grant allowed him to spend six months painting in London. Robinson paints daily in his East Walnut Hills studio and teaches figure drawing and painting at the University of Cincinnati and at Manifest Creative Research Gallery and Drawing Center. His work is represented regionally, nationally, and internationally at Heike Pickett Gallery, Versailles, Kentucky; Gallery Henoch, New York; and Waterhouse & Dodd Contemporary, London, England.