ROBERT INDIANA

Examining Indiana’s critique of the duality of the American Dream—both its promise and its privations—this exhibition will highlight the connections between the artist’s personal history and the social, political, and cultural realities of postwar America. Reflecting on the critical and political underpinnings of Indiana’s work, as well as his enduring impact as an artist, Pace’s presentation will include loans from several prominent institutions.

One of the preeminent figures in American art since the 1960s, Robert Indiana–born Robert Clark in the state of Indiana in 1928–played a central role in the development of assemblage art, hard-edge painting, and Pop art. Indiana, a self proclaimed “American painter of signs,” created a highly original body of work that explores American identity, personal history, and the power of abstraction and language. His legacy resonates in the work of many contemporary artists who make the written word a central element of their oeuvre, making him one of the most important figures in the recent history of art.

Pace’s exhibition in New York will be accompanied by a new catalogue from Pace Publishing, which will shed light on Indiana’s lifelong artistic engagement with both the aspirations of the American dream and its dark underbelly–the repressed dimensions of American history and society, from colonialism to materialism and commodification. Among the works on view will be the 1961 painting The Calumet, which features the names of Native American tribes, acknowledging the presence of Indigenous life and culture within the subconscious of America; The Black Marilyn (1967/1998), a painting that speaks to the commodification of celebrity and desire in American mass media in the 1960s; and the painted bronze sculpture The American Dream (1992/2015), bearing fundamental words of the human condition: “HUG,” “ERR,” “EAT,” and “DIE.”

Pace’s presentation will also include works from Indiana’s iconic LOVE series, recontextualizing this important and well-known image within his broader practice and tying this motif to other words and ideas—including “EAT” and “DIE”—that recur across his paintings and sculptures, symbols of both personal and universal significance in Indiana’s work.

An exhibition at Kasmin Gallery in New York—Robert Indiana: The Source, 1959-1969, highlighting works from the artist’s personal collection—will be presented from February 27 to March 29 in dialogue with Pace Gallery’s Robert Indiana: The American Dream. The Robert Indiana Legacy Initiative, represented by Pace Gallery, and The Star of Hope Foundation, in partnership with Kasmin Gallery, have developed these distinct exhibitions in parallel to explore different aspects of Indiana’s artistic output and offer a diverse set of perspectives on the most formative decade of his career.