Roland Gebhardt

Born in Paramaribo, Suriname (1939), educated in the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Germany, he lives and works in New York. He holds a Master of Arts degree from the Hamburg Academy of Art (1964). Gebhardt is a sculptor whose minimalist work has been shown worldwide and is present in several prominent collections. He is best known for his monolithic sculptures of the 1970s, exploring the concept of linear emptiness, some functioning as large-scale public works (e.g., Wave Hill and Storm King in New York). He began his career with a group of minimalist artists such as Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Richard Serra, Brice Marden, among others, during exhibitions between the 1970s and 1980s, including the exhibition “The Minimal Tradition” at the Aldrich Museum. In 2008, he inaugurated the multimedia work “The One Tribe” at the Art & Technology Center 3LD in New York and created sculptural masks in the “Dancing Sculpture” series.

He produced a series of masks, exploring identity, and collaborated with artists from other disciplines, including on the multimedia piece “The Only Tribe” (2008). Since 2013, he has conducted experiments at the Storm King Art Center and the Chautauqua Institute, showcasing the spatial relationships built at the intersection of identity, abstract sculpture, and landscape design. In 2014, he presented “Trophies,” a unique collaboration between sculpture, dance, and music that explores issues of identity and transformation of the living being (Erie Art Museum in Erie, Pennsylvania).

He is very active in community activities related to the preservation of urban planning and architecture in New York. For many years he dedicated himself to design, participating in projects in the United States, Europe, and Japan, creating sculptural furniture lines. He never abandoned his artistic and authorial production, but stopped exhibiting it for almost four decades. In recent years, he has developed a series of three-dimensional drawings on paper and striking sculptures in corten steel, aluminum, and zinc, maintaining the tradition of minimalism and conceptual sculpture. He recently showcased his work in a solo exhibition in Brasília/DF and at fairs such as SP-ART, VOLTA Basel and NY, EXPO Chicago, India Art Fair, among others.