Charlie Roberts (1983) is a polymath, a cultural magpie. His various endeavours cross-pollinate, building myths amongst themselves. Born in the USA, educated in Canada and living in Norway, Roberts’ works borrow from art-historical and pop-cultural sources. His cramped paintings display the perspectival complexity of ancient Egyptian and Byzantine painting. The contents are stacked one above the other, showing different views simultaneously. The subject matter – utterly contemporary, banal and everyday – is at odds with the delicacy of the medium the works are made in. Watercolour on paper, over a painted pink ground which unifies the overall image and brings harmonious tonal order to the chaotic scenarios. His wide-ranging practice also encompasses sculptures roughly carved from chunks of local trees and then painted, situated somewhere between tribal objects, folk art and pop-cultural figures.
Charlie Roberts’ work takes us to a manic, obsessive mind stream of an eclectic collector of contemporary pop culture and art history. Everything is sampled and laid out without hierarchical order and judgements. Roberts uses a wide range of materials and masters a furious force as well as a sensitive subtleness. Abstract patterns, flowing colours and a primitive brutality work alongside tender lines, seductive realism and psychedelic poetry. Every single picture or sculpture holds its own autonomous world. Roberts’ works construct a self-contained imaginary world that comes to an end at the edges of the canvas or paper: a world of bright colours and insouciantly coiled lines describing schematic, ornamental bodies without depth. According to the artist, his work is committed to pure play without consequences.
www.francisboeskeprojects.nl