Roberta Allen
About
Roberta Allen is a conceptual artist and fiction writer. Her interest in language is the bridge that connects these separate pursuits. As a conceptual artist who combines images and text, she explores how language changes or informs our perception of images. Her works included drawings, artist books, photo/text works, installations, digital prints, and sculpture. Her works in the early 1970s were inspired by Kierkegaard’s belief that our deepest experiences occur in the form of contradictions and wherever there is contradiction humor is present. Through the 1970s, she exhibited alongside Sol LeWitt, Robert Ryman and Carl Andre, among others, at John Weber Gallery in New York. In her writing, which includes, among other books, three micro and short story collections, a novel, a novella and a travel memoir, Allen questions the way we perceive the world and the self. Truths are relative and may change in a flash. The way our minds work and specifically the act of relating is her main subject. She presents disturbing views of the human scene which are often relieved by humor.
