sitting inside, on, and beyond...

Robert Rauschenberg was quoted as saying he wanted to work "in the gap between art and life." Its easy to see this approach translateded in many of the 67 works collected in the new Combines exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Fabrics and taxidermy, cans and furniture, blinking lights and ticking clocks. Fifty years later and his pieces still tell a unique story, stretching and challenging the imagination. These carnival like patchworks and constructions beg to be wondered about and inhabited.

In Rauschenberg's work both comfort and confusion are found. Not to mention a collection of references to both the past and the future.