Kenny Irwin: The Robolights Project, Palm Springs 1986-2017

“The way cats were born to meow, I was born to make art,” says the artist, Kenny Irwin, Jr. A compulsive maker since childhood, Irwin has invested a lifetime transforming a one-acre property in a Palm Springs’ neighborhood into an artwork of epic proportions. It is with great pride that MOCAD presente RoboLights Detroit at Mike Kelley’s Mobile Homestead in Fall 2019.

Accompanying the exhibition, this publication celebrates the original Robolights project in Palm Springs. This archive of Robolights also serves as a testament to Julie Reyes Taubman, another compulsive maker in her own right, who documented Irwin’s spirit and the over thirty year project. We all owe a profound thanks to Julie for her ability to recognize the powerful work of artists who use their practices to address the state of the world and bring us closer together.

With the support of her husband Robert Taubman, Julie co-founded MOCAD in 2006. It has contributed significantly to the landscape of Detroit and changed many lives for the better. Artists are truth-seekers and storytellers. They create, translate, and illuminate. They influence, inspire, and build movements. When we need to escape the news and the day’s events, we sink into a moving work of art or performance or film or book and it restores us. They remind us that we’re human and they connect us to one another again.

This project is supported by the Alfred Taubman Foundation and championed by Robert Taubman, Lorraine Wild, and Chris Byrne.

Hardback, 119 pgs.