Employing paint, collage and silkscreen to masterful effect, Robert Minervini’s still life paintings are beautiful and dystopian. House plants and succulents populate shelves littered with the detritus of Eastern and Western Civilizations, begging the questions of what will grow and what will not. Each rich tableau stops time as the items on display rest in the niches of a nostalgic version of the future. Caught between yesterday and tomorrow, these signs and symbols lose their significance and become nothing more than ornamentation, like the flora around them: a visual statement indicative of painting now in the post-Internet age.

Robert Minervini (b.1981, Secaucus, NJ) received his BFA from Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, and his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Minervini has an extensive exhibition history and has participated in artist-in-residence programs at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE; the Headlands Center of the Arts, Sausalito, CA; the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT; and the Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, CA, among others. His work has been reviewed and published in the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Art Ltd. Magazine, Beautiful Decay Magazine, and New American Paintings. He has completed multiple public art works through the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program and the San Francisco Arts Commission. He currently lives and works in Oakland, California.