Bio and Affiliation
Lincoln Tobier has been a working artist for over 25 years and has exhibited internationally
since the early 1990s. Born and raised in New York City, he studied at the Rhode Island
School of Design in Providence, RI. (BFA 1986). Tobier moved to Los Angeles in 2000.
Tobier has been a recipient of the City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Fellowship
(2007) and the California Community Foundation Award (2013).
Institutional exhibitions include: Institute for Contemporary Art, London (1993);
Neue Galerie, Graz (1993); Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (1994, 1995); Haus der Kulturen
der Welt, Berlin (1996); Center for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow (1997); Kunstverein
Hamburg, (1998); Ludwig Museum, Aachen (1998); Public Art Fund, New York (1998); Los
Angeles County Museum of Art (1999); Biennale di Venezia (2003); Art Center Wind Tunnel,
Pasadena (2004); Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Bologna (2007); Centre d’Art Bastille, Grenoble
(2008); MOCA, Los Angeles (2008); MAK Center, Los Angeles (2011); Galerie fur Zeitgenössische
Kunst, Leipzig (2011); Royal College of Art, London (2012); Cooper Union, New York
(2012); Hessel Museum of Art ar Bard College (2018); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2019).
Tobier has been on the faculty at Otis College of Art and Design since 2013.
Title: Roger Ailes: A Retrospective in Context
Media: Chromogenic prints mounted on Dibond, model truck, pamphlets, MDF walls, video
Dimensions: Variable, Images 36 x 48 inches
Date: 1992/2011/2018
Location: Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, 2019
Title: Roger Ailes: A Retrospective in Context
Media: Chromogenic prints mounted on Dibond, model truck, pamphlets, MDF walls, video
Dimensions: Variable, Images 36 x 48 inches
Date: 1992/2011/2018
Location: Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, 2019
Title: Margaret Thatcher Cadbury Worker
Media: Archival pigment prints, aluminum frames
Dimensions: 36 x 48 inches overall
Date: 2016
Title: Roger Stone at Alan Flusser Boutique, New York City, August 19, 1987
Media: Archival pigment prints, aluminum frames
Dimensions: 36 x 48 inches overall
Date: 2018
Title: Fairness Doctrine 1949 (part 1)
Media: Archival pigment photograph
Dimensions: 36 x 48 inches
Date: 2021
Title: Fairness Doctrine 1949 (part 2)
Media: Archival pigment photograph
Dimensions: 36 x 48 inches
Date: 2021
Public collections
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.
The basis of Tobier’s artwork is a critical exploration of the public sphere, the
systemic erosion of forms for open exchange and debate, and the structural and legal
encroachment on the ethos of democracy. His work examines the power and effects of
mass media in both the affirmative sense of its possibilities for cultural production
and community building and also its function as a means for financial and political
gain by way of emotional manipulation. Tobier sees the goal of this work is to participate
in, and add to, the discourse on the relationship between aesthetics, ideology, and
mass communication. He has used a range of forms and media including sculpture, painting,
photography, video, sound, radio, installations, public projects, and performance.
Much of Tobier’s work is project-based, which allows for the development of work in
various permutations over the course of years.