Robin Winters

The month-long show took place in a four floor building on West 41st Street and was densely packed with art.

Robin Winters (born 1950 in Benicia, California) is an American conceptual artist and teacher based in New York.

Winters is known for creating solo exhibitions containing an interactive durational performance component to his installations, sometimes lasting up to two months.

As an early practitioner of Relational Aesthetics Winters has incorporated such devices as blind dates, double dates, dinners, fortune telling, and free consultation in his performances.

Throughout his career he has engaged in a wide variety of media, such as performance art, film, video, writing prose and poetry, photography, installation art, printmaking, drawing, painting, ceramic sculpture, bronze sculpture, and glassblowing.

Recurring imagery in his work includes faces, boats, cars, bottles, hats, and the fool.

Winters was born in Benicia, California in 1950 to lawyer parents.

As a child his hobby was collecting glass bottles found on the beach and under old buildings, which would later influence him as an artist.

Winters attended Benicia High School until the end of his sophomore year.

He then traveled to British Columbia to a take part in a Quaker school work-study program.

After traveling briefly to Alaska, Winters returned to Benicia in 1968.

He worked in the Weldon Leather Tannery, the Allied Products Wire Wonder Utility Factory making laundry baskets, and the Clearwater Ranch in Cloverdale, where he was a live-in counselor for autistic children.

Also in 1968, Winters had his first durational performance, entitled Norman Thomas Travelling Museum.

The artist drove a Volkswagen bus decorated in collage, many of the images relating to current events and politics.

Inside was what the artist described as a “reliquary” containing many objects, including a bottle collection.

Winters took the van to shopping centers and even as far as Mexico.

In 1974, Winters performed The Secret Life of Bob-E or Bob-E Behind the Veil eight hours a day, five days a week for a month in his studio apartment.

Behind a one-way mirror the audience could watch Winters play the character of Bob-E, whose goal was to make a monument for everyone in the world in the form of blue and yellow rubber top hats.

By the end of the month the artist had constructed 262 hats.

The following year, Winters was invited to take part in the Whitney Museum's 1975 Biennial Exhibition.

Entitled W.B. Bearman Bags a Job or Diary of a Dreamer, Winters’ piece was the first durational performance in the museum.

For two months the artist traveled by subway to the museum, sometimes in a bear mask – one of several he wore for his piece.

There he would punch into a time clock and enter a self-made box divided into two parts, one part for the artist and the smaller part for the audience.

The two sections were divided by a one-way mirror which the artist used to give the audience occasional glimpses of his environment.

Winters could also play music, speak to the audience, and even tell their fortune through a microphone installed in the box.

Throughout the rest of 1975 and 1976 Winters traveled throughout Europe and North Africa, showing a solo exhibition entitled Dedication to the Man Whose Main Job Was Testing Whistling Tea Kettles in 1975 at the Konrad Fischer Gallery in Düsseldorf, West Germany.

Also in 1976, Winters formed the partnership “X&Y” with fellow artist Coleen Fitzgibbon that would last two years.

Together they performed a series of shows in the Netherlands, most notably a show entitled Take the Money and Run.

Performed at De Appel in Amsterdam, the show involved the artists robbing their audience.

The following day the audience was given an apology, as well as the opportunity to retrieve any valuables and participate in a lottery to win the artists’ services.

They also made a Super 8 film in NY called Rich-Poor, in which they asked people on the streets their thoughts on the rich and poor.

As they became more involved in their own work and producing Colab group exhibitions, Winters and Fitzgibbon ended their partnership as X&Y.

Winters produced several exhibitions at his studio, including The Doctors and Dentists Show, The Dog Show, and The Batman Show, which was organized by Diego Cortez.

In 1980 Winters participated in The Times Square Show, The Real Estate Show and in Absurdities at ABC No Rio.

That same year he and artists Peter Fend, Coleen Fitzgibbon, Peter Nadin, Jenny Holzer, and Richard Prince also formed The Offices of Fend, Fitzgibbon, Holzer, Nadin, Prince & Winters.

This short-lived collective was based out of an office on lower Broadway and offered “Practical Esthetic Services Adaptable to Client Situation”, as stated on their business card.

Their goal was to offer their art as “socially helpful work for hire”.

In June of that year Winters participated in The Times Square Show, Colab's most well-known exhibition.

To cap off a busy year, Winters also became one of the first artists to join the Mary Boone Gallery, showing a successful solo exhibition in 1981.

In 1982, Winters had his first solo exhibition in Los Angeles at the Richard Kuhlenschmidt Gallery