Robert Rindler has been fascinated with finding the syntax linking disparate,disordered elements for more than two decades. Rindler is a native New Yorker who, far from taking his hometown for granted, has deepened his familiarity with New York City since returning from Boston in 1994. Rindler's training as an architect and environmental designer heightens his awareness and disciplines his thinking about man-made environments, while his artist's eye and natural enthusiasms drive a fascination with cultural by-products.
Rindler's organizational skills and affinity for systems and collections have been with him for life, pushing his artwork forward and strengthening his personal and professional efficacy. He enrolled at Cooper Union as an undergraduate to study art but finished with a degree in architecture, followed by a master's in environmental design from the Yale School of Architecture. Throughout his 25-year career as an educator and administrator, Rindler has served as a Professor of Art and Art Department Chair at the University of Vermont, where his interest in vernacular design began. He served as Dean of Students at the Boston Architectural Center and as Associate Provost at the Rhode Island School of Design before becoming the first alumnus of Cooper Union to be appointed Dean of its School of Art. Rindler founded the Francis Colburn Gallery at the University of Vermont and has directed galleries at the BAC and Cooper Union.
Rindler has had solo exhibitions at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Richard DeMarco Gallery in Edinburgh, Scotland, the Boston Architectural Center, the Fleming Museum in Burlington, Vermont and the Yale University Art Gallery, among others. His drawings, photographs and site-specific works have been exhibited nationally in numerous group shows. He has been the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and both the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and the Vermont Council on the Arts. He has also received many professional development awards and served on the Board of Directors of several state arts councils throughout the Northeast. More recently, his curatorial work for such major exhibitions as 1997's Techno-Seduction at Cooper Union received recognition in The New York Times, London's Guardian, The Village Voice and The Chronicle for Higher Education.
David Joselit wrote in Art New England: "Rindler sees like an architect--he composes facades, juxtaposes masses, creates vistas with geometry." Further, Rindler deconstructs the environment and aggressively reconstitutes it into unexpected phylogenies, reminding us of material culture's power and presence.
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