Bob Trotman: Business As Usual

February 1 – July 8, 2018

Bob Trotman satirizes the world of corporate business and high finance by reinterpreting it through the eye of a master artist/craftsman. With gouges and chisels, he follows in the tradition of the great medieval sculptors of saints and the makers of cigar store Indians and sailing ship figureheads, but uses their ancient techniques to render modern-day portraits of office workers trapped in high-rise careers of quiet desperation, and to build symbol-laden motorized mechanisms that lampoon the myths of capitalism through biting metaphor. Many of the figures move, emit sound or perform whenever visitors trip their motion-sensors. This is the largest exhibition of Trotman’s kinetic work ever assembled.

Curated by: the Van Every/Smith Galleries at Davidson College in cooperation with the Projective Eye Gallery at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston, and the Gregg Museum of Art & Design. Business As Usual would not have been possible without support from the NC Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources; the Lewis-Butler Foundation; the Herb Jackson and Laura Grosch Gallery Fund; the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation; Malu Alvarez, Davidson College Class of ’02; and the Davidson College Friends of the Arts. Additional support for the Gregg installation was provided by Robert Keith Black and J. Ormond Sanderson Jr.