Robert Suermondt: After Morel
Annet Gelink Gallery proudly presents the first major solo exhibition of Swiss artist Robert Suermondt (1961, Geneva, Switzerland) in the Netherlands. Last year, his work was amongst others on view in the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven and CAMeC, Centro per l'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, in Florence. And even earlier, in 2001, his paintings were exhibited by us at the group exhibition Far From Us, alongside works of Carla Klein, Michael Raedecker and Dirk Skreber.
Robert Suermondt creates ambiguous images that fluctuate between fact and fiction. His paintings draw their inspiration from images from mass media and have high reality content because of the similarities. The frame working is striking: the heads of the persons have been cut off, they fall outside the picture. This intensifies the impression of the picture as a snapshot in time and stresses the anonymity of the images, qualities that also belong to journalistic photos.
Robert Suermondt's paintings not only convey the impression to be a reproduction of a real situation. As an observer, you are simultaneously aware of the constructed nature of the images. The way in which the image has been cut raises questions about what falls outside the picture: who are those persons, and where does it take place? The paintings are not only a representation of an event, as in traditional reproduction, in which the canvas is a plane on which reality is projected, but show several dimensions of an image. That impression is intensified by the sublime compositional building: there is not just one disappearing point, no there are several. This draws the attention of the spectator to not just one particular point, but the paintings invite you to let your gaze roam over the canvas.
Besides painting, the After Morel exhibition shows also collages. He is mainly interested in the structure of his works of art. And this is not only found in the way in which he steers the spectator's gaze, his collages, which are exhibited at the back of the gallery, have been composed according to a clear pattern. Suermondt knows how to control our gaze in a masterly way.
