Robert Minervini

My painting and public art practice examines an evolving relationship between nature and culture through the depiction of invented spatial environments. I utilize tropes from art history, science fiction, film, and quotidian life to create an uncanny form of realm.

From grand landscapes to intricate still-lives, my work addresses the impact of humanity on the landscape and questions our relationship to it. Saccharin sunsets and dense, a-natural foliage show a hyper-naturalism that mirrors the climate crisis.

I create imagery by collaging found and personal photographs in Photoshop, altering them, and then translating those compositions to the canvas through a range of techniques—stencils, hand painting, airbrushing, spray painting, and silk screen. This intervention complicates what’s natural and what’s contrived in the painting. I’m drawn to the artificially flat nature of acrylic paints and their properties, which is often in contrast to the subjects I depict.