Robin Kid: Searching for America
Templon Gallery, New York
From September 4th until October 26th, 2024
Robin Kid, aka The Kid, is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist of Dutch origin. His works draw on a variety of social, political, and traditional images from the past and present, whose rebellious, religious, fantastic, and sometimes offensive nuances intuitively stem from the world of advertising, the internet, the entertainment industry, and his childhood memories. This produces ambitious, enigmatic, and thought-provoking narratives that challenge the polarized world of the 21st century.
From the beginning of the 21st century, what have always been perceived as traditional distinctions have given way to increasingly blurred boundaries: propaganda blends with news, Church with state, and brands with art. Robin Kid’s new exhibition, Searching For America, is a provocative and curious journey through a multitude of different Americas — from the comforting to the troubling, from the creative to the destructive. Through his work, the artist dives headfirst into the whirlwind of American iconography as an export, the kind of imagery that has shaped morals, fears, and expectations for generations around the world. Evoking feelings of uncertainty alongside our most naive hopes and dreams from childhood and adolescence, Robin Kid illustrates how our collective consciousness, shaped by programmed memories, can serve as an allegory for history as a whole; addressing broader social and political issues, both directly and abstractly, highlighting the fluid and sometimes fictitious nature of our understanding of the past and our expectations for the future. Fascinated by the power of consumerism, Kid uses the language of billboards — filled with bright colors, bold slogans, and the general promise that the future can only get better — to express the disillusionment felt by new generations. Combining shaped stainless steel panels with oil paintings and aluminum sculptures in a playful, toy-like manner, the artist creates idealized billboards of our shared fears and desires, all within a specific context of intense power and control. Kid’s paintings, sculptures, and installations, filtered through a European sensibility, explore a culture that is both immediately familiar and profoundly alien, yet whose influence is undeniable.
Inspired by James Rosenquist, Robert Rauschenberg’s combines, and early works by Jim Dine like Lawnmower and Child’s Blue Wall, Robin Kid’s new pieces are hybrids — neither paintings nor sculptures, but both together. They invade the viewer’s space, demanding attention and initiating a dialogue. These works, bold and menacing yet perfectly balanced, act like advertisements that evoke a powerful nostalgia. They remind us of a time and place from which we are, and perhaps have always been, exiled.
Photo © ROBIN KID for TEMPLON.
For further information templon.com.
