BIO
Randy Polumbo is an installation-based artist living and working between Joshua Tree, California, and New York City. His work has been showcased internationally, in locations ranging from urban environments to natural landscapes such as deserts, ruins, and caves.
Major exhibitions include the Museum of Old and New Art (Hobart, Tasmania), Bass Museum (Miami, FL), Ohr-O’Keefe Museum (Biloxi, MS), Norton Museum (Palm Beach, FL), and The Bunker Artspace (West Palm Beach, FL). Prospect 3 & 5 (New Orleans, LA), Kasmin Gallery (Miami/NYC), Bombay Beach Biennale (CA), Press and interviews include the New York Times, Paper Magazine, The Cut, Vice, The Art Newspaper, Artdaily, Golden Handcuffs Review, and New York Magazine. Residencies include Yaddo (Saratoga Springs, NY) and Park Stewardship Through the Arts (Joshua Tree, CA).
Polumbo’s work is in the private collections of notable figures such as Beth DeWoody, A.M. Homes, Tim & Stephanie Ingrassia, Ann Magnuson, Rick Moody, Kenny Scharf, Jon Stryker & Slobodan Randjelovic, Uma Thurman. His works are also held in public collections including the Museum of Old & New Art (Hobart, Tasmania), Crocker Museum of Art (Sacramento, CA), and The Museum of Sex (NYC).
He is a graduate of The Cooper Union School of Art, a LEED accredited master builder, and serves on the Board of Directors of New York Live Arts.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Randy Polumbo is a visual artist whose practice intervenes in perceptual, ecological, and propagational systems. Informed by his wide-ranging study of horticulture, engineering, and regenerative design, his projects use recycled, repurposed, as well as living materials to enact alchemical, spatial, and social transformation. Polumbo’s projects center the formal and elemental aspects of a site such as light, water, and earth to draw our attention to geological time—that is, processes beyond the scale of human perception. The works reveal their own chronology, framing the simultaneity of growth, endurance, and impending collapse. Sometimes this is to frame the enormity of the natural world, such as caves and grottos which are not static forms but phenomena constantly advancing. Other times this is to repair travesties of industry and instruments of destruction, recuperating sites of petroleum spills or monocultural agriculture by creating moments of surprise interaction, collective curiosity, or beauty.
MAP
Explore an interactive map of selected projects by Randy Polumbo