Thinking of You
an installation by Robert Roane Beard

a powerful tribute to friends lost to AIDS
The photographs are taken from the installation Thinking of You. To access the installation, visitors were forced to pass through a curtain, beyond which they encountered white pillars topped with plaster heads. On the surface of the pillars, the artist had written letters in India ink, addressed to friends and lovers who had been killed by AIDS in the ten years preceding the exhibition. The function of the descending spiral writing was to compel the audience to walk around each pillar multiple times to complete the reading; the audience itself created a circular movement within the exhibition space, merging with the rhythm of the work. This piece was the artist’s attempt to create a monument to lost relationships—cut short by death—and to convey a message with universal resonance.

ROBERT ROANE BEARD
Robert R. Beard was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in the southern United States, in January 1959. He moved to New York in 1983, having already been producing art for several years. He began working primarily with watercolor, creating figurations and color schemes that recall Klee and the Austrian artist Unterwasser. Over time, he gradually started painting on canvas and sculpting as well. This mixed exploration across various fields eventually led him to the realm of installations—an approach exemplified by the piece first shown in New York at the TREAC gallery, then in Milan at the OPOS space, as well as in Turin and Hudson.
His artistic language became much more mature, and the “content” of his work fused with a visual approach that combined representation (in this specific case, the multiple images of the artist’s head were created by his sister) with an expressive conceptuality of graffiti-like markings and volumetric elements that required an active experience. The viewer was not merely a passive observer but was also compelled to read and move along freely chosen paths, thus contributing to the creation of the artwork and its meaning.
In many ways, Beard’s work—much like that of Cy Twombly, a beloved reference for him—aligns closely with European experiences of visual poetry.