CHARLIE ROBERTS: POSSIBLE WORLDS
Nino Mier Gallery is pleased to announce Possible Worlds by the artist Charlie Roberts. For this occasion, Roberts presents a series of new works inspired by his childhood in Kansas and his later life in both California and New York, as well as films, books, and music that have been influential to the artist.
June 21 - July 20, 2024
Each work serves as a condensed narrative inviting viewers to gain insights into the artist’s world. The paintings are characterized by a sense of mystery and dreaminess, illustrated by the artist's elongated and distorted figures, often portrayed alone, that sometimes appear sleeping or in a suspended moment of anticipation and waiting.
Growing up in Kansas, Roberts experienced "ranch" life with many houses around him designed by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, known for their integration with the natural world and rational structures. Inspired by this architecture, Roberts extracts geometric elements and uses them as a constructive device to create the backdrop for many of his paintings.
Some characters who inhabit Roberts' worlds are real, as in Peter in LA, which depicts Peter Schuyff, a close friend and former teacher of Roberts, at work in his Los Angeles studio. Other times, the characters are entirely fictional, such as the cyborg lady in Afternoon Tea—a half-human, half-robot figure—or other half-human, half-dog figures that feature in the painting Merchant Marines.
Another important and recurrent element in his works is the presence of a window, whether it be one or multiple. Through them the artist manages to cut out a space of the painting and allow the viewer to look beyond the initial scene. In many paintings the characters are looking out of the window, and for the artist, this is a representation of his daydream state of creation, a moment that you look out waiting for something to happen or come in.
Through the window in Yellow Clock, we see grey skyscrapers under a burning post-apocalyptic sunset, with two people in the center relaxing in a gridded bathroom. The spaces we see inside and outside are very different, almost in contrast with each other, creating two very different moods in the same painting.
For Roberts, each element in his works is like a key, a door to his world, to his life and to his many inspirations. Each element becomes like a character of a wider and longer story, and sometimes these characters come back and we can see them again in multiple contexts and perspectives. In Possible Worlds we are all invited to enter and transport ourselves through Roberts’s colorful and surrealistic universe.