Walter Robinson: Biology
Stems Gallery is pleased to announce the rst solo show of Walter Robinson in Belgium. Entitled 鈥淏iology,鈥� the exhibition features a large range of his works, including examples of what is perhaps his best known series, melodramatic scenes of desire based on illustrations done for pulp paperback covers in the 1950s. The show also presents more recent figurative paintings derived from clothing ads in department store yers, and from seles used as advertisements by working women. A selection of his ongoing series of still lifes, which range from cheeseburgers and alcoholic beverages to pharmaceutical products such as aspirin, round out the exhibition.
鈥淚 would like to call the show 鈥楤iology,鈥欌�� Robinson said, 鈥渂ecause everything I do is about desire rooted in biology.鈥�
Biology is one system for the interpretation and understanding of the 鈥渓ife force鈥� that is present in all living things. It鈥檚 an elemental force, and functions in an elaborate dynamic with similarly powerful forces of culture, history, civilization and ideology. Admittedly when Robinson started painting in the late 鈥�70s it was in service of 鈥渄esire鈥� in its simple, material forms, notably the physical appetites. When Robinson was younger, it was romance. Now, several decades later, he paints cheeseburgers! (The show features two works from the artist鈥檚 new 鈥渉ealthy series鈥� of paintings of salads, which he claims are the rest in the history of Western art.) Evolution is perhaps the grandest manifestation of the life force, and is most clearly referred to in his paintings of kittens: the animal has evolved to appeal to us on an atavistic level. So pictures of cake, the pharmaceuticals, the Normcore fashion models, those are all images that are specifically designed to sell. Recently he has come to think of these 鈥渂ase鈥� desires as all part of this life force. The life force underlies all of our nutty cultural formations of desire at the same time, it constitutes the science of biology.
Robinson is viscerally drawn to images that enlist the viewer in a real subject-object dynamic. He paints what the society of consumption showcases from a hamburger to a promotion article such as a shirt on an advertising panel. Everything that people use, buy or yearn for in their everyday life could be in Walter Robinsons work. Pop is all about consumer culture of course, and Pictures Theory takes note of the oversized role that photographic images play in the construction of our reality. The return to representation after the sublimi- ties of Abstract Expressionism, and then again after the intellectual extremes of Conceptual Art, allowed for a particularly sophisticated embrace of the everyday with all its tragedies and comedies. Walter Robinson works in this vein. By painting a cheeseburger, which is a still life of the 21st century, he paints something that everyone is utterly familiar with, something that is universal but also individual 鈥� we know what we think of cheeseburgers as well as we know anything. As a fast food, the cheeseburger is a humble commonplace at the same time as it is an icon of mass production and the insatiable appetites of consumer culture. For Robinson, the cheeseburger serves as an emblem of the threshold between the carnal and the spiritual, and the ideal subject for a painting.
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Stems Gallery is pleased to announce the rst solo show of Walter Robinson in Belgium. Entitled 鈥淏iology,鈥� the exhibition features a large range of his works, including examples of what is perhaps his best known series, melodramatic scenes of desire based on illustrations done for pulp paperback covers in the 1950s. The show also presents more recent figurative paintings derived from clothing ads in department store yers, and from seles used as advertisements by working women. A selection of his ongoing series of still lifes, which range from cheeseburgers and alcoholic beverages to pharmaceutical products such as aspirin, round out the exhibition.
鈥淚 would like to call the show 鈥楤iology,鈥欌�� Robinson said, 鈥渂ecause everything I do is about desire rooted in biology.鈥�
Biology is one system for the interpretation and understanding of the 鈥渓ife force鈥� that is present in all living things. It鈥檚 an elemental force, and functions in an elaborate dynamic with similarly powerful forces of culture, history, civilization and ideology. Admittedly when Robinson started painting in the late 鈥�70s it was in service of 鈥渄esire鈥� in its simple, material forms, notably the physical appetites. When Robinson was younger, it was romance. Now, several decades later, he paints cheeseburgers! (The show features two works from the artist鈥檚 new 鈥渉ealthy series鈥� of paintings of salads, which he claims are the rest in the history of Western art.) Evolution is perhaps the grandest manifestation of the life force, and is most clearly referred to in his paintings of kittens: the animal has evolved to appeal to us on an atavistic level. So pictures of cake, the pharmaceuticals, the Normcore fashion models, those are all images that are specifically designed to sell. Recently he has come to think of these 鈥渂ase鈥� desires as all part of this life force. The life force underlies all of our nutty cultural formations of desire at the same time, it constitutes the science of biology.
Robinson is viscerally drawn to images that enlist the viewer in a real subject-object dynamic. He paints what the society of consumption showcases from a hamburger to a promotion article such as a shirt on an advertising panel. Everything that people use, buy or yearn for in their everyday life could be in Walter Robinsons work. Pop is all about consumer culture of course, and Pictures Theory takes note of the oversized role that photographic images play in the construction of our reality. The return to representation after the sublimi- ties of Abstract Expressionism, and then again after the intellectual extremes of Conceptual Art, allowed for a particularly sophisticated embrace of the everyday with all its tragedies and comedies. Walter Robinson works in this vein. By painting a cheeseburger, which is a still life of the 21st century, he paints something that everyone is utterly familiar with, something that is universal but also individual 鈥� we know what we think of cheeseburgers as well as we know anything. As a fast food, the cheeseburger is a humble commonplace at the same time as it is an icon of mass production and the insatiable appetites of consumer culture. For Robinson, the cheeseburger serves as an emblem of the threshold between the carnal and the spiritual, and the ideal subject for a painting.
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