UNC Charlotte, Davidson College partner to present works by noted N.C. artist

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

The UNC Charlotte College of Arts + Architecture and Davidson College are presenting exhibitions featuring the work of North Carolina artist Bob Trotman.

“Business As Usual” will be displayed at the Projective Eye Gallery, UNC Charlotte Center City, from Friday, Sept. 8, through Thursday, Dec. 14 (curated by Crista Cammaroto), and at Davidson’s Van Every/Smith Galleries Thursday, Oct. 19, through Friday, Dec. 8 (curated by Lia Newman). Each venue will display different works; between both exhibitions, more than 30 sculptures, 50 maquettes and 18 drawings will be exhibited.

The Projective Eye Gallery will host an opening reception from 6 to 8 p.m., Sept. 8; the opening reception for the Davidson College exhibition will be 7 to 8:30 p.m., Oct. 19. Trotman will speak about both exhibitions in an artist lecture at 7 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 2, at UNC Charlotte Center City.

Trotman was born in 1947 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and for 42 years has maintained a studio in the foothills of Western North Carolina. Working mostly in wood, but also using motion, light and sound, Trotman satirically suggests a confluence of power, privilege and pretense that secretly, or not so secretly, shapes the world.

Trotman’s characters work out what he describes as “the struggle for self-determination in the face of standardized social pressures,” a search for an “authentic existence versus wealth and success”: the crack in a forehead foreshadowing the eventual panic attack, the stain on a cheek resembling a tear, the upside down individual - vulnerable to larger, unseen Machiavellian forces.

His work has been widely exhibited in solo and group exhibitions and is included in several important permanent collections, such as the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Weatherspoon Museum of Art, the Mint Museum, Museum of Art of the Rhode Island School of Design, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the Museum of Art and Design in New York, among others.