Robert Rauschenberg

His newest group of works is one of his more extraordinary visual reenactments of that exploration into the world of the sensate: the Anagrams are the poetic ciphers of his self’s self-discovery as it travels among the objects of the material world and inserts itself into the chaotic, arbitrary world of nature.  (Bernice Rose, Robert Rauschenberg, exh. cat. New York, Pace Wildenstein Gallery, 1996, p. 7)

The present work dazzles in both the complexity and multiplicity of our experience of it.  The viewer is presented with the various patterns, images, and iconography that all come together to release a stream of meanings.  Whilst as a two dimensional object, given its size and presentation, it has an immediate impact, it is only when living with the work that the subleties and textures of color and composition of its meanings and everyday juxtapositions come to full bloom.  Bright versus dark, figural versus non-representational, passive versus active, quiet versus loud and startling, these polarities enrich our experience of the work itself and sharpen the viewers very act of looking.