Robert Yarber: Regard and Abandon

New York

February 6 – March 22, 2025

Robert Yarber

Regard and Abandon, 1985

acrylic on canvas

72 x 96 in
183 x 244 cm

Robert Yarber

Pier, 1989

oil and acrylic on canvas

84 x 84 x 2 in
213 x 213 x 4 cm

Robert Yarber

Crowds and Power, 2018

oil and acrylic on canvas

72 x 132 in
183 x 335 cm

Robert Yarber

Error's Conquest, 1986

oil on canvas

71 x 130 in
180 x 329 cm

Robert Yarber

Contemplation of the Absolute, 1993

oil on canvas

68 x 96 in
172 x 243 cm

Robert Yarber

Out, 2015

acrylic on panel

36 x 36 in
91 x 91 cm

Robert Yarber

Sleepy Eyes, 1991

oil on canvas

60 x 68 in
152 x 173 cm

Robert Yarber

Why Flesh? Use Gel, 2013

colored pencil, pastel, ink on paper

14 x 11 in
35 x 28 cm

Robert Yarber

Auto-Medicate, 2012

colored pencil, pastel, ink on paper

40 x 26 in
101 x 66 cm

Robert Yarber

Tunnel of Rub, 2013

colored pencil, pastel, ink on paper

60 x 42 in
152 x 107 cm

Robert Yarber

No! Not That!, 2013

colored pencil, pastel, ink on paper

60 x 48 in
152 x 122 cm

Robert Yarber

Mountain of Madness, 2013

colored pencil, pastel, ink on paper

80 x 60 in
203 x 152 cm

Robert Yarber

A Cigar is Never Just a Cigar, 2010

colored pencil on paper

14 x 11 in
35 x 28 cm

Robert Yarber

Binocular Rivalry (In and Out), 2009

colored pencil on paper

14 x 11 in
35 x 28 cm

Robert Yarber

One Taste, 2010

colored pencil, pastel on paper

32 x 26 in
82 x 65 cm

Robert Yarber

Corpus Resurrectum Est, 2010

colored pencil on paper

38 x 24 in
96 x 61 cm

Press Release

Robert Yarber: Regard and Abandon is the first survey of Yarber’s major paintings and works on paper from the 1980s through the 2010s, and his first solo exhibition in New York since Calaveras Gnosticos in 2009 at Sonnabend.

 

While not immediately recognizable to the current generation, his mark on the American consciousness is indelible. Yarber first gained international recognition in the early 1980s. His inclusion in Paradise Lost/Paradise Regained: American Visions of the New Decade, an exhibit organized by the New Museum for display in the American Pavilion at the 41st Venice Biennale in 1984, and the 1985 Whitney Biennial injected him into the creative zeitgeist. 

 

You’ve felt his influence before, even if he’s not on the tip of your tongue. His works and artistic imprint helped define the nihilistic hedonism of the 80s. The cinematic nature of his practice lent itself to film and television, and lots of it. Iconoclastic touchstones such as 1983’s The Hunger and 2019’s Uncut Gems feature his paintings prominently. In 1991, MTV highlighted his works in a series of television and print ads. (Pier, 1989, was among those included.) The artistic director of Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas cited Yarber as a primary influence, as did David Lynch in stylizing Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive. He’s omnipresent in the countercultural ether.

 

Regard and Abandon features highlights from the two threads of composition that characterize the artist’s career.
 

First, the paintings. His epic, past-the-witching-hour cityscapes feature bodies, often falling or flying, reflecting artificial neon and fluorescent light from the topography that envelopes them. The collective luminescence of the figures in combination with the synthetic landscape is not so much saccharine as it is serene; most viewers of these works were born into similarly manmade environments and nurtured to consciousness while swaddled by the unnatural. 

Next, the drawings. Conceived of during ayahuasca trips in Peru in 2005 and initially articulated at his studio in Kathmandu, Yarber eased-up on the high-contrast neons-on-black of his paintings, and let loose in pastels on white cotton-rag paper—the better not to see the skin, but to see through it to the shamanic aliens, Gods and deities, sea captains, and massive (yet somehow effeminate) dongs that populated the universes within his psychonautic adventures.

 

Taken together, the body of work included within this survey offers the first Stateside overview of Yarber’s international career, which is now well into its fifth decade. 
 

Robert Yarber (b. 1948, Dallas, Texas) has exhibited nationally and internationally since the early eighties. Solo exhibitions include Regard and Abandon, Nicodim, New York (2025, solo, forthcoming); Anamorphic! Sublime!, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2019, solo); Return of the Repressed, Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles (2018, solo); Panic Pending, Reflex Amsterdam, Holland (2014, solo); Calaveras Gnosticos, Sonnabend Gallery, New York (2009, solo); Sortie: The Demonological Survey, Kyungpook National University Art Museum, Daegu (2007, solo); Robert Yarber, Sonnabend Gallery, New York (1998, solo); Robert Yarber, Sonnabend Gallery, New York (1993, solo); Climax of the Commonplace, Sonnabend Gallery, New York (1990, solo); Robert Yarber, Sonnabend Gallery, New York (1987, solo); and Robert Yarber, Sonnabend Gallery, New York (1985, solo). His works can be found in the collections of Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The PaineWebber Art Collection, New York; The Broad Museum, Los Angeles; and The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, among others.