Press / catalogues
Robert Taplin - Two Sculpture Series - 2006 - 2016
"Everything Imagined Is Real (After Dante)" and "History of Punch" with essays by Nancy Princenthal, Chris Hedges and Robert Taplin
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Philadelphia Inquirer, January 26, 2015
"After presiding over the historic entrance to the Pennsylvania academy of Fine Arts for more than a year...."
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Pennnsylvania Academy of Fine Arts - Brochure
The Young Punch Juggling, February 1015 - May 2016 Robert Taplin: Punch, February 13 - May 24, 2015
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Wall Street Journal, Jan.2013
"Heaven, Hell, and the History of Punch," the title of Robert Taplin's arresting survey show at Ground for Sculpture, is not simply a provocative phrase designed to draw...
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New Jersey Times, November 2 2012
"Strange looking men have taken over the the Museum Building at Grounds for Sculpture..."
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Aldrich contemporary Art Museum - Brochure
Robert Taplin: Selection from the Punch Series, 2005-10, with essays by Richard Klein and Daniel Wolff
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Sculpture Magazine, March 2011
"Taplin's "Punch" series gives a contempo- rary psychological and political twist to the misadventures of this imaginary trickster from 17th-century commedia dell'arte "
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Sculpture Magazine, October 2010
"Among last season's most haunting exhibitions, Robert Taplin's "Everything Imagined is Real (After Dante)" (2007-2009) featured nine eerie "tableaux", enacted by small life-like figures contained in massive wooden 'shrines' "
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Newington-Cropsey cultural Studies Center, March, 2010
"In his recent exhibition, "Everything Imagined is Real (After Dante)" at the Winston Wachter Fine Art in New York..."
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Art New England, Nov/Dec 2010
"There are bodies in crates inside Robert Taplin’s studio.Yet this is not a laboratory of sinister purpose, though to see Taplin leaning over his newest sculpture like an enraptured anatomist might suggest otherwise. These wrapped figures are exercises in the relationship between stuff and story - the sculptor’s most provocative subject of late."
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The Boston Globe, April, 2009
"The interpretations are sufficiently offbeat and unexpected to escape the dangers of kitschy illustration. The best one, I thought, was No. 5, "I Saw Shadows Carried on That Wind," which has us looking through a window out over a courtyard in the gloaming. The ravishing sky is streaked with clouds and punctuated by two airplanes."
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Art In America, April, 2009
"Hell as described by Dante is re-envisioned by sculptor Robert Taplin in the works that comprised the exhibition Everything Imagined Is Real (After Dante)..."
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New Haven Magazine, August, 2008
"Sculptor Robert Taplin feels that the real world is the one that goes on in your head. So he looks for an art in the vernacular to confront heady ideas without gettin lost in the cobwebs of pretentious obscurity..."
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The Boston Globe, Jan 17, 2008
"The best works in the show capitalize on those elements. Robert Taplin's "Over the Dark Waters (Dante and Virgil Come to the River of Hell)", from a series depicting scenes from Dante's "Interno", is about seven feet wide and bathed in blue light..."
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Five Outer Planets Catalog
Ezra and Cecile Zilka Gallery, Wesleyan University, 2004 with essays by Nina Felshin and Karen Wilkin
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ARTnews, December 2004
"Sculptors are taking realism into other dimensions: the weird, the uncanny, and the monstrous. They are hyping the imperfections of the figure, chopping it up, painting it and even putting clothes on it..."
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The Hundson Review, Summer 2006
"Taplin's recent work rang changes on familiar images and types, forcing us to look harder and to reconsider our assumptions. His small figure groups, tracking the adventures of the British heir to the commedia dell'arte, Punch,... "
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Art in America, September 2004
"Robert Taplin's sculpture installation, The Five Outer Planets, is a work both beautiful and affecting. Entering the long, darkened main room of the Zilkha gallery, one encountered five pairs of sculpted male nudes suspended from the ceiling ... "
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Hartford Advocate, January 2004
"There's just no denying an exhibit like Robert Taplin's "Five Outer Planets" at Wesleyan's Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery. You enter a room installed with five "planets" of the solar system... "
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Catalog, UMASS, 2001
Brochure for exhibition of "Jupiter" at the Hampden Gallery, UMASS with essay by Nancy Princenthal
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New Yorker, May 2000
"Our solar system's planets have been envisioned in many ways, but it's a safe bet that no one before Taplin has pictured them as a troupe of bald, beefy middle-aged men, think Telly Savalas, dancing naked in pairs... "
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Sculpture Magazine, March 2001
"Each figure sculptor must devise a set of strategies to animate the inert material of his or her figures, otherwise one ends up making mannequins - effigies frozen in a pose ... "
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Brochure - Trans Hudson Gallery - 1997
Robert Taplin, Trans Hudson Gallery, NYC, 1997 with essay by Daniel Wolff
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Art in America, March 1998
"Realism in sculpture is different than in painting. It has little to do with questions of mechanical image production, which realist painting can't seem to escape, but is concerned with the most primitive art-making impulses,... "
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The Times-Picayune, May 1997
"Robert Taplin's figurative are about the size of action toys - but you needn't be a child to bring them to life. The sculptor himself has supplied that mysterious quality... "
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Review, November 1997
"At first glance, Robert Taplin's sculpture looks not only traditional, but academic in the most literal way... But as I suspected, Robert Taplin's work is not what it appears to be at all... "
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Art in America, January 1995
"Robert Taplin's generally small scale bronzes depict the human figure presented with some exceptions in attitudes that rehearse moments of social intercourse, some of them extreme... "
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New York Times, September 1977
"There's a real element of serendipity in a new, free art show in New Haven: turn a corner, then a crank, and you get a celebration of a city. Nine metal boxes will be found starting today on lampposts and bus signs all over town... "
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Connecticut, September 1977
"If you see a funny looking box made of scrap metal on the streets of New Haven this month, take a look inside. Peep shows have gone legit... "
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Village Voice, October 1978
"Look into these nine peep shows, turn the cranks, pull the levers; short poems about romance float by; whimsical abstract tableaux - bits of plastic, tiny toys, metal scraps - show you where the couple loved and lost... "
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The Journal-Courier, September 1977
"Sculptures are for museums, right? And if you touch one, you get your hand slapped, right? Metal sculptor Robert Taplin of West Haven and poet Daniel Wolfe have produced nice sculptures that you have to touch to enjoy... "
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