3 Total Environments by Robert Wilhite

The Jade Garden/Artists’ Apartment, 1985

Commission for the Washington Project for the Arts (WPA), Washington, DC

In 1985, executive director Jock Reynolds commissioned artists David Ireland and Robert Wilhite to convert an 800-square-foot space in the WPA galleries into living quarters for artists-in-residence and visiting scholars.

Wilhite and Ireland constructed a labyrinth-like floorplan that interwove the form and function of the space. The adjacent kitchen and bath areas, for instance, were partially conjoined by curved walls connected by an eight-foot flourescent light.

Both artists considered light to be a driving force in their design, and is reflected in the materials employed—slit corrugated metal walls, granite countertops, and high-glossed wooden walls, ceilings, and floors, so the light reflected and diffused throughout the space. They also maintained the industrial aesthetic of the previously dilapidated rooms – leaving the nails, screws, and drywall seams exposed.

Wilhite created simple, functional, yet sculptural furniture for the space. He designed and installed a permanent, maple twin-size bed in a nook in the main living area, a table and simple chairs that would also serve as tables. A floor la­mp inspired by Kandinsky’s concept of point, line, and plane provided additional light in the living space, along with a kitchen table that fit the curved wall enclosing the kitchen-bathroom area. Ireland and Wilhite transformed the WPA space into a “functional artwork” suited to its purpose of a live and work space.

BOB’s Your Uncle , 2014-2016

Kunstverein, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Robert Wilhite uses abstraction to eliminate unnecessary distinctions between painting and frame, artwork and environment. BOB’s YOUR UNCLE (BYU) was originally commissioned by Maxine Kopsa, director of the Kunstverein Amsterdam, as an installation and serving room at the non-profit art space(2014-2016). Over two years, the bar functioned as a venue for forty-nine artist presentations, and remains a significant part of the Kunstverein’s history and Amsterdam’s artistic community.

Wilhite’s environment notes the complete artistic and architectural environments of Utopian-minded artists, such as Theo Van Doesberg, Gerrit Rietveld, and El Lizzitsky, whose goals were clearly stated and understood through the simple visual vocabulary exemplified in their works of artistic, decorative, and architectural unity. BYU's rigid artistic and political goals are aligned with these earlier historic works: the reference serves to potentially enable a significant discussion through the comparison.

The success of the BYU inspired the creation of Bobs Pogo Bar (2016-2017) at the Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin where a variety of artists again are currently enabled to make weekly presentations of their artwork.

Click HERE to view the entire exhibition on our Artsy site.

Bob’s Pogo Bar, 2016-

Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin

Bob’s Pogo Bar is inspired by a bar that existed in the late 90’s in the basement of Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin. The original Pogo Bar was a squat punk club that welcomed a variety of writers, artists, gallerists and musicians after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Pogo Bar and surrounding Berlin-Mitte area provided an inexpensive site for cultural production and exchange. Robert Wilhite’s Bob’s Pogo Bar is at once an installation, salon, and potential theatre where video and performance artworks take place.

When commissioning the project, director of the Kunst-Werke, Krist Gruijthuijsen communicated the need for the space to function simultaneously as an independent installation and as a venue for artists to make presentations of performance, music, and video work. Bob’s Pogo Bar is taken over by an artist once a week, hosting an evening that can evolve out of their own practice or expand it into a night of drinks, music or performance. The program—compiled by Maurin Dietrich and Cathrin Myer—ranges from sound performances and thematic dinners to short plays and spatial interventions, and is announced seven days in advance on the KW website.

Wilhite realized “… that if the place was to be a success, it needed to have a few traditional ‘artworks’ installed but needed to be an environment that welcomed the artwork of others without conflict or the overwhelming presence of numerous paintings and sculptures. My final solution for the space was to create an environment where the taxidermy animals enhanced the space as their space, insinuating that the humans were invading their space….”