Press
"The art of Robinson Fredenthal is rigorous, mysterious, elegant and modest. He is less an object maker than he is an explorer. Although he works with steel, with cardboard, with plywood, Fredenthal's true medium is the wholly immaterial. He is one of the most relentlessly inquisitive geometers alive. No artist of our age-not Tony Smith, not Sol LeWitt - has wrung more mystery than he has from the 90 degree angle and the solids that it breeds.
He has a mystic's perseverance. Though Fredenthal investigates properties of solids, he is no mere logician. Something in his method, his questing, his devotion, calls to mind an eremite pondering the endless meaning of the cross. His art is not quite rational; its peculiar balances and unexpected leanings frequently astonish. Nor is it wholly secular. One glimpses in his work the apotheosis of the cube.
Excerpt from Washington Post Art Critic, Paul Richard
What can you do with cubes? You can stand them on their corners, slice through them with planes, rotate them or stack them. Cut a cube a certain way and you will find within it not just the 45-45-90-degree rectilinear geometries that you might expect, but 60-degree angels, equilateral triangles, rhomboids, tetrahedra. Still working in the cube, Fredenthal will choreograph these differing geometries until others less familiar are discovered in the dance. The far from simple sculptures that Fredenthal has drawn from such simple operations now number in the thousands. Some seem to contain angled little words, glowing stars of empty space; others lean like drunks about to topple over. Some are graceful, some seem awkward. No two are alike.
Most, as of this writing, exist as models only. In sum they well maybe his most important work. Fredenthal, who has trained as an architect, knows enough about industrial technologies and architectural scale to command a fabrication of large public sculptures of power and distinction. The one trouble with such pieces is that they stand alone. His thought is like a tree; it branches and it penetrates and it leads he knows not where. One Fredenthal si not enough. It is better to see hundreds"
Most, as of this writing, exist as models only. In sum they well maybe his most important work. Fredenthal, who has trained as an architect, knows enough about industrial technologies and architectural scale to command a fabrication of large public sculptures of power and distinction. The one trouble with such pieces is that they stand alone. His thought is like a tree; it branches and it penetrates and it leads he knows not where. One Fredenthal si not enough. It is better to see hundreds"
