ROBIN KOENIG

Education:

      
Exhibitions:

Grants/Awards:

Bibliography:

Joseph Woodard, “Anti-homey Show,” Santa Barbara News-Press, March 26, 2004, artScene, page13.
New American Paintings: M.F.A. Annual 2003. Boston, MA. Open Studios Press.
Juror: Lawrence Ridner, Curator of the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Joseph Woodard, “Interior Speculations,” Santa Barbara News-Press, June 11, 2003, D3.

Madeleine Series

The Madeleine Series incorporates a variety of materials and working methods from painting and drawing to embroidery.  The images, which often have a subtly referenced human form, are created on the surfaces of used bed sheets.  The sheets provide a layered and visually dynamic working surface, printed with familiar patterns and marked by stains that suggest their former intimate use.

The initial concept and title for this series was inspired by Marcel Proust's “In Search of Lost Time: Swann's Way.”  I was particularly moved by a passage in which the character Marcel tastes a madeleine dipped in tea and is transported back in time through memory.  Random House Webster's College Dictionary defines madeleine as “1. a small shell-shaped cake 2. something that triggers memory or nostalgia.”  A madeleine is a cookie but more significantly it connotes an object that provokes involuntary memory.  This series originated with the question of how to represent that which is only present in memory.  My challenge began with the problem of depicting what is no longer visible, calling forward what is no longer there.

This series is also an exploration of the phenomenology of time, specifically how the past is perceived in the context of the present.  Individual marks function as the memory of a moment and the repetition of these marks throughout the entire image operates as a record of successive moments, linking the past act of creating the work to the present experience of viewing it.  The accumulation of marks serves to visually compress time when seen simultaneously within the finished image.

Another aspect of these compositions is the juxtaposition of the machine printed sheet pattern with the hand made pattern.  The hand rendered elements are visually dominant but the original machine made pattern always remains visible.  The large amount of time the hand made patterns take to create connotes a personal attention and unique history, which contrasts with the mass-produced sheets.  When both systems combine they form a new multi-layered and multistoried palimpsest.

Each mark and each image is made through a careful repetition of lines, shapes, colors and textures.  My process is methodical and labor intensive and each work acts directly as a transcription of time spent in the studio.  The work not only serves as a record for the memory of the process but also synthesizes its multi-layered past with the present of the viewer.



Lacuna Series

A lacuna is a gap or missing piece.  The Lacuna Series consists of magazine pages and books with the text carefully excised creating delicate paper lace.  The cut paper reflects the shape of the original text layout on the page and acts as a memory of the removed story.  This work is viewed with the removed text reversed and combines the removed text with the image printed on the opposite side of the page.

The dichotomies present in this series refer to some fundamental problems of phenomenology.  A basic phenomenological puzzle we have all seen consists of a drawing that can be perceived as two different pictures (the most common are the rabbit/bunny, vase/profiles pictures). The perceived variations in the picture cannot be experienced simultaneously and the picture can only be described as two different pictures.  Like opposite sides of a page the images seem to flip back and forth, each picture can be seen only when the other is excluded from perception.

This series began with the challenge to create through removal and to bring together things that are inherently separate.  New images are created by bringing the opposite sides of a page together simultaneously.  The Lacuna Series also addresses the experiences of memory and absence.  The image on the page is obscured by the holes in the page.  Text is never directly present; it is suggested only through the gaps left by its removal.

Sky Series

The Sky Series consists of systematically constructed images based on the sky and the shapes of constellations.  These abstract images are made through combined processes as varied as photography, embroidery, painting and drawing.  Each image is initially inspired by the light of the daytime sky or the constellations of the night sky and grows to include additional repeated shapes and marks.

There are 88 recognized constellations, each with its own story and unique coordinates. Annually stars are seen at predictable intervals and are associated with specific seasons, reflecting the cyclical, repetitive nature of time. This idea of cyclical time shapes how we perceive the world; we are ruled by the rhythms of the sky.  On a large scale there are the cycles of the sky, on a personal level we each have daily routines.  This repetition creates a structure in which life is lived and understood.  The sky series connects the grand and universal with personal and mundane through repetition.

By layering representations of constellations, and creating new connections within and between recognized constellations the Sky Series distorts and compresses time.  Working with surfaces such as blurry photographs or used bed sheets lends a sense of the past.  Repeated shapes and marks correspond to repeated time or time spent.  The viewer connects the present with the work through the act of looking.  This work serves as a record and depiction of time and reflects its simultaneously fleeting and repetitive nature.



Robin Koenig  2004