RANDY POLUMBO
Randy Polumbo’s work ranges from experiments with photography, hand-blown glass and crystal proliferations festooned on welded metal illuminated with LEDs. His practice incorporates symbolic colonization, pollination, and retooling of various systems—libidinal, ecological and biological.
His design projects typically include recycled, repurposed, and green elements, rendering a supportive and inspiring environment.
Polumbo has also been the recipient of several residencies, including Shed im Eisenwerk Dogether in Switzerland, The Corporation of Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, and the Joshua Tree National Park Stewardship. There, he co-founded The Art Queen, a gallery and arts center, and he also designed and built a house that has received significant recognition for its blend of architectural and sculptural elements.
A graduate of The Cooper Union School of Art, Polumbo’s work has been exhibited nationally and abroad including the Bass Museum, Miami,
Art Basel, Miami Beach, Steven Kasher Gallery,
New York, Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York,
511 Gallery, Imago Gallery, Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, BoxOffice Projects, New York, as well as installations at the Kingston Sculpture Biennial, Figment: Governors Island, Burning Man, and High Desert Test Sites, Joshua Tree, CA.
Polumbo is a LEED accredited master builder and advocate for solar power and renewable energy, and a uniquely alchemical visual artist, inextricably weaving passion and practice.
LODESTAR, COACHELLA 2017
Polumbo embellished a 50-foot-high Lockheed Martin Lodestar jet with glass flowers, crystals and mirrors.
”The reflections, the bright colors, the intentionally strange and intimate spaces, an inward journey made from something that was supposed to do the opposite." Sitting on 10,000-pound legs, the elliptical dome was designed for viewers to climb up to the top.
This seven-story column with 300 colored panels invited festival-goers to walk up its cylindrical ramp to an observation deck with views of the entire grounds. Add to that, 6,000 feet of hidden LED lights, which illuminate every step of the structure, and it's an immersive experience.
MONA - Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New
Art - 2017 saw the opening of Pharos—the new wing of MONA, cantilevered over the River Derwent housing major new works by James Turrell, Nam June Paik, Randy Polumbo, James Tinguely and Richard Wilson.
Randy’s Grotto (2017) is recessed into the walls of the museum. Silver couches rise from the centre of the room, while the polished aluminum ceiling is adorned with pixelated images on small LED screens and bouquets of hand-blown glass dildos.
Randy Polumbo lives and works in NYC & Joshua Tree, California. Take a tour of his 4000 sq ft studio in a 1930’s era Gowanus warehouse.
Antigenic Rift, 2020
Quartz crystals, hand silvered mirror, reflective highway beads, hand-blown glass elements, epoxy, steel, and structural foam
156 x 96 x 54 in
Lodestar 2017
Lockheed Martin Lodestar Jet with glass flowers, crystals and mirrors Coachella Festival
Grotto 2017 - Silver couches, blown glass, polished silver ceiling - MONA, Tasmania Museum of New and Old Art, Pharos wing, installation shot
Portal 2019
Mixed media, LEDs, blown glass, Telephone booth
89 × 31 × 31 in | The Wrecktory -Polumbo Studio
ANTIGENIC RIFT 2020
Science first considered the virus a poison, then a life form, and today a microscopic parasite that cannot survive outside of a host body. For the planet earth, are humans alive or are we an opportunistic infection or rash? Is the earth living, or is it a rock hurtling through the dry vacuum of space? Even stones in the desert are animated with the behaviors of life from a distant timescale, slowly grinding together, giving birth to sand that will one day be pressed together again into rocks. Humans are the prey of this tiny organism from “inner space.” Being part of its food chain galvanizes people into cohesion and concert… an agent for change. With appendages that detect, and then, connect intentionally, what is the nature of this relationship? The line between parasitic and symbiote may be messy; nature does not follow rules, although its patterns sometimes suggest it does. Perceptually, there is always an interpretive continuum, whoever records history… wins.
Angler Grove - A revelatory woodland portal with LED lights, blown glass and soft cushion stairs,
Bombay Beach Biennale 2018. Visitors repose under the trees or in the high density crystalline and polished metal accelerator chamber.