ARTnews
©1998 Sarah SchmerlerThis review of Arthur's 1997 show at the New World Art Center appeared in ARTnews in February 1998.Arthur Robins
NEW WORLD ART CENTER
The 60-some paintings in Arthur Robins's recent show were full of tenacity, a touch of psychosis, and a lot of promise. Robins's efforts reange from souvenir-style views of New York gently laced with foreboding (a couple courting on a blanket in Central Park amid strongly colored shafts of failing light) to disturbing urban-fever dreams (phantasmagoric visions of the subway, where subterranean tracks lurch into the distance and stairways melt into snake-like spirals). Robins uses warped perspectives to powerful psychological effect in these tunnel scenes and in a series of images he made of all-night billiard halls. In one, a shiny black eight ball dwarfs the surrounding players; in another, a corner pocket looms in the foreground like a yawning abyss. The artist paints confidently, as though determined to get his thoughts out quickly in a kind of colorful automatic writing.