This compelling retrospective of paintings, mixed-media work, and video from 1985 to 1995 documents Robert Farber’s artistic development in the face of death. Farber, who was diagnosed as HIV-positive in 1987, managed to produce his finest work in the last five years of his life. The forty-seven paintings and constructions on view chronicle the artist’s coming to terms with homosexuality, alcohol and drug abuse, alienation, and finally terminal illness.

Farber had been involved in theater and performance art until 1981, when he began to study at the Art Students League. His first accomplished