Robert Quint

Bio

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There is a kind of carefree feel about Robert Quint’s paintings, somewhat like a child-like universe. The colours are energic and contrasting. The subject matter flows ; the shape which is successively being put into perspective or blended into light wisps follows an enigmatic and joyful rhythm. And still, from the heart of this seeming naivety burst areas of psyche. There is a steady and persistent questioning. The work makes us read the world between the lines, at the same time full of irony and candour, shadows and light.

The artist has a strong sense for the diverse. He draws upon the iconographics from his everyday life, and superimposes, associates, and mixes. The vision becomes more intricate. The painting which is powerless against the abrupt flow of images and analogies which may arise from the eye of the painter, waivers between absurdity and poetry. The artist collects signs of strangeness and assembles them into a utopian landscape. The pine tree is in the form of an emblem. As a ‘protective’ figure, it neither structures nor constitutes the landscape. It is the tree of memories, of immortality, and is the sign of the ambivalence of feelings which a young German artist may have with regard to his historical heritage. Here the memory work is of course linked to a work of mourning. Upgraded is a pictorial transcription of this questioning of identity. The landscapes derived from the personal and family archaeology of the painter, confront the immemorial with fleetingness, fragility with density, opacity with transparency.

Several works by Robert Quint give one the opportunity of having an echoing visual experience. It is an experimental way of working, without value at first glance. Amidst collage, drawing, painting or object, the viewer is invited to find his own way, to write his own story. The seemingly spontaneous composition enhances the poetic and humorous power of the design. Cellular shapes, ghost-like silhouettes or imaginary creatures drawn from the folk stories of his home country, the figures are like the memories that can just about be remembered. Robert Quint’s painting, all entangled, and indirect, somewhere between being erased and bursting out, questions a reality on the point of disappearing. by Wivine de Traux