BIO
Randy Polumbo is an installation-based artist who lives and works between Joshua Tree, California and New York City. His artwork has been shown nationally and internationally across metropoles and natural landscapes such as deserts, ruins, and caves.
Major exhibitions include Museum of Old and New Art (Hobart, Tasmania), Ohr-O’Keefe Museum (Biloxi, MS), Prospect 3 (New Orleans, LA), Kasmin Gallery (Miami/NYC), Bass Museum (Miami, FL), Bombay Beach Biennale (CA), Norton Museum (Palm Beach, FL), and The Bunker Artspace (West Palm Beach, FL). Press and interviews include New York Times, Paper Magazine, The Cut, Vice, The Art Newspaper, Artdaily, the 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 Lorinda Ash, Beth DeWoody, Stephen Heighton, A.M. Homes, Tim & Stephanie Ingrassia, Jamie Kabler & Helene Galen, Jonathan & Barbara Lee, Maya Lin, Ann Magnuson, Rick Moody, John & Amy Phelan, Kenny Scharf, Jon Stryker & Slobodan Randjelovic, Felicia Taylor, Uma Thurman, David Walsh & Kirsha Kaechele; as well as the public collections of 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, as well as 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