About — Bobby Abate

I am a multi-media artist working in painting, drawing, film, video, assemblage, sculpture, tarot, technology, sound and motion graphics.

Painting in the studio at the LMCC Art Center on Governors Island. November, 2023.
Photo by Todd Stephens.

Directing the short film, “The Ghost at Skeleton Rock” in Callicoon, NY. September 2024.
Photo by Janhavi Pakrashi.

For many years, my artistic focus was solely on EXPERIMENTAL FILMMAKING. My first film, The Zero Order, was made possible by a grant from the Princess Grace Foundation and premiered at the New York Film Festival in 2001. Since then, my films and videos have been shown at festivals, theaters, galleries, and museums around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Cinematheque, and the Guggenheim in Bilbao.

In 2013, as my father was diagnosed with dementia, I felt drawn to a more intimate and meditative practice, working with just my hands and paper. Over the next 10 years, I immersed myself in the research and design of my lifelong ambition: creating my own Tarot deck. In 2021, I self-published THE OUTSIDER TAROT and its guidebook through a successful crowdfunding campaign that was funded in just 4 hours. The Outsider Tarot was sold at MoMA PS1, is now part of the permanent collection of the Harvard Fine Arts Library, and the 750-unit first edition is currently sold out.

My recent PAINTINGS AND DRAWINGS are fueled by my research into the fragmented and contested history of my queer ancestors, who lived underground in fear of persecution before the 1969 Stonewall Riots. Interweaving queer-coded obsessions from my past—from limp-wristed Looney Tunes to flamboyant supervillains—with discoveries from my research, my works connect wildly disparate imagery, evoking humor, sexual tension, dysphoria, nostalgia, and rebellion. In 2023, I was honored to be selected by the LMCC for an artist residency on Governors Island. My paintings and drawings have been exhibited at several galleries, including International Objects, the Stephen Street Gallery, and the 2024 LBIF Works on Paper show curated by Kim Conaty, chief curator of the Whitney Museum. I’ve recently been awarded grants from DVAA and Lighton International Artists Exchange and residencies from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Saltonstall Foundation in Ithaca and Zaratan in Lisbon, Portugal.

As a PICTURE EDITOR AND ANIMATOR and member of the Television Academy, I’ve worked on everything from scripted shows to documentaries, reality TV, music videos, animations, and performance videos, including critically the acclaimed series We’re Here (HBO), Gaycation (VICELAND), and several performance video projects for drag superstar Sasha Velour including her latest show, Velour: A Drag Spectacular at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego in Fall 2024.

In September 2024, I directed the short film The Ghost at Skeleton Rock, funded by a special project grant from the Princess Grace Foundation and a second successful crowdfunding campaign. The casting call attracted 1,400 submissions. Set in 1992, this supernatural-tinged coming-of-age story is inspired by my personal experiences of coming out during a time when society largely ignored the AIDS crisis, as millions of gay men were lost. The film is set to premiere in fall 2025.