Ronald Gonzalez was born in Binghamton, NY, in 1952. Since the mid seventies the artist has worked from his garage studio in upstate New York creating elegiac sculptures and installations that are embodiments of death and loss infused with psychic energy, grotesque narrative and witty pathos. Grounded in the legacies of assemblage Art and the upright figure, Gonzalez works primarily in a series with steel armatures, time worn objects, and detritus from his surroundings. The sculptures emphasize the emotive and psychological workings of found “mind objects” that serve as human heads and torsos of his macabre collections. The artist’s restless investigation of animating materials has produced a hybrid art of dissolution with archaic, apocalyptic, and quasi-alien elements that eloquently convey a sense of mortality, nostalgia, private meanings and mysterious presence.
Gonzalez received his BA from the State University of New York 1982, where he currently teaches as Professor of Sculpture since 1999. He has also taught as an Artist in Residence at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 1993, and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 1996, as well as residencies at Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, New York 1998, Sculpture Space, Utica, New York 1989, John Michael Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan in 1988, and Provincetown Arts Work Center, Provincetown, Massachusetts 1998. He has received grants from the Pollock Krasner Foundation, 1986 & 1998, The Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation Fellowship 1999, New York State Council of the Arts grants 1988 & 1989, and New York State Foundation for the Arts project grants 1993 & 1996.
His work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions including Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia. DeCordova Museum & Sculpture Park, Lincoln, Massachuesetts. Savanna College of Art & Design, Savannah, Georgia. The Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Lawrence, Kansas. Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, Missouri. Everson Museum, Syracuse, New York. Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art, New York, New York. Fisher Art Gallery, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Allan Stone Gallery, New York, New York. Sumter County Gallery of Art, Sumter, South Carolina. Salina Art Center, Salina, Kansas. Hanes Art Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Intar Gallery, New York, New York. Rahr West Art Museum, Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Atrium Gallery, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut. The Hudson Walker Gallery of Art, Provincetown, Massachusetts. Selected Group Exhibitions include, Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York. Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Spoleto Festival, Charleston, South Carolina. The Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, Indiana. Woodruff Art Center, Atlanta College of Art, Atlanta Georgia. Turchin Center for the Arts, Boone, North Carolina. Gallery 24, Berlin, Germany. Cavin Morris Gallery, New York, New York. Alternative Museum, New York, New York. Institute Cultural Peruano Norte Americano, Lima, Peru. Art Omi, Ghent, New York. John Michael Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Muse De Arte Modern, Buenos Aires, Argentina. East Hampton Center for Contemporary Art, East Hampton, New York. Newhouse Gallery, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island, New York.
