Robinson, Michael

American, b. 1981

BiographyKnown for his experimental films, Michael Robinson disseminates new meanings from fragments of pop culture. Through mediating seemingly disparate elements from found and original footage that borrow from personal and collective memory (clips from the popular 1990s television show, Full House, Michael Jackson music videos, and Sega videogames, for example), his films exude both visual and narrative complexity. Much like his multilayered films, Robinson’s photographic collages source imagery as varied as fruit tree diseases or computer graphics from the 1980s to fabricate unfamiliar forms that are then assembled over found photographs of idyllic landscapes to create new, otherworldly contexts.

Robinson’s work has been included in the 2012 Whitney Biennial, The International Film Festival Rotterdam, The New York Film Festival, The Sundance Film Festival, the London Film Festival, and the San Francisco, Melbourne, Leeds, Vienna, Singapore, and Hong Kong International Festivals. He has also been included in exhibitions at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; MoMA P.S.1, New York; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH; and Tate Modern, London. Cinema Scope magazine listed Robinson as one of the “Best 50 Filmmakers under 50,” and was noted as one of the top ten avant-garde filmmakers of the 2000’s by Film Comment magazine.