Robert Brinker

Robert Brinker’s layered multimedia “drawings” reflect his printmaking background and draw inspiration from sources as divergent as pre-Roman mosaics and Walt Disney cartoons. Dark graphite tracings of lines from coloring books, traditional Chinese drawings, and adult comics layered with additional cut paper and reflective mylar, form innocuous-seeming compositions of flowers, figures, stars, and bows that belie naughty details. The characteristic thickly outlined forms in Bubble Machine (2011) may invite comparison to the simple black lines that form Mickey Mouse, but closer examination reveals a jumble of phalluses, orifices, and raw, sexual activities. Sexuality likewise informs Brinker’s 2006 “Chrysanthemum” series, consisting of delicate paper cuts made from centerfolds of adult magazines. Brinker also creates large, colorful, abstract paintings following the same process he applies to the cut drawings, then digitally manipulating scans of the collages.