Kenya (Robinson): FUCKYOURCOUCH

May 21 – July 8, 2016

Cindy Rucker Gallery is pleased to present a site-specific installation by Kenya (Robinson). FUCKYOURCOUCH is a manifesto that challenges the idea of “sofa art” as the sofa is no longer allowed to be a passive object but an irreverent symbol of an artist’s ire.

Kenya (Robinson) (b. 1977, Germany) is an artist that likes to poke: she likes to poke fun, she likes to poke holes, she likes to poke the eye of exclusion and white privilege. FUCKYOURCOUCH is an exhibition about her dissension with The ArtWorld™, the “obnoxious older sibling, at once supportive and withholding” and it’s continued celebration of itself and nepotistic approach to creating prominent artists.

Symbolized by the couch, the temporary resting place of the young and transient, (Robinson) acts by extracting the raw beauty from free sofas and cheap Craigslist finds. She expertly carves and molds into shambles, gangsta-with-tassels style. With a pallet of stuffing, springs, and foam padding, (Robinson) does her worst with sledgehammers, electric knives, chainsaws, seam rippers, cling film, heat and glue guns, and gallons of cheap red wine.

While art and design have always been interesting bedfellows, (Robinson) shines a light on the blurry line between them by stating “Fuck believing that the only work that is consistently supported is design masquerading as Art.” Unlike the forced artist interventions on functional objects that exist as a single pun repeated with every use, her couches defy gravity and shed their skins to reveal their true expressionist selves.

In this exhibition, (Robinson) expresses more than a humble sigh of acceptance of the fact that there is no such thing as a meritocracy. She is anti-complacency. She is action and resolution. She is the angry voice of the under-represented. She is unapologetic. “Rick James up in this bitch. Frustration is a hell of a drug.”