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7/2/2013

Rob Carter

Galeria Arnes y Ropke, Madrid

Galeria Arnés y Röpke is pleased to present Faith in a Seed, Rob Carter's first solo exhibition at the gallery, on view February 8 - April 30, 2013.

Rob Carter uses photography, stop-motion animation, and time-lapse video to spotlight buildings and their shifting political and historical significance. Architectural themes and histories are invented or modified using physically cut-up and digitally manipulated photographic images of specific buildings, towns and landscapes. This process simulates paths of urban development and recontextualizes cultural traditions such as sport and religion. The interaction of plant life with these photo-structures represents the irrepressible strength of nature that our buildings attempt to shield us from, as well as the temporality and fluidity of the environs we inhabit.

Rob Carter was born in Worcester, UK and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He received his Bachelor in Fine Arts from the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Worcester College, Oxford University Oxford, UK, and his Master in Fine Arts from Hunter College in New York City.

His work has been presented in numerous institutions worldwide, most recently with the solo-commission awarded by Art in General, New York for the creation of Faith in a Seed. Carter's work has also recently been included in exhibitions at The Field Museum in Chicago, De Vishal in Haarlem, the Netherlands, and Centrum Festiwalowe in Lodz, Poland among others. His works were also presented at the 8th Busan International Video Festival in Busan, Korea, and the 18th Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film in Stuttgart, Germany.


Reflections on Rob Carter's Faith in a Seed

The project Faith in a Seed is based on three different life projects and their approaches to history and sciences: Charles Darwin's Down House, Henry David Thoreau's cabin at Walden, and Sir John Bennet Lawes' Rothamsted Manor, in order to reflect on different possible ways of constructing a philosophy of life.

Nevertheless this text emanates only from the hypothesis that the book "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau, is probably still the most significant example in literature for a positive and respectful life towards nature and in general.

"We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done." 1

Rob Carter is in love with nature, with stop-motion animation and time-lapse videos, documenting the evolutionary process of the phenomenon of urban construction and its historic and cultural impact by creating an artistic eco-system. His project takes us to a journey through time.

A cabin in the woods in the 19th Century, a writer contemplating the role of human beings in nature, his impact and capability of seeding instead of destroying, living in synchronicity with nature, cohabiting, not conquering the natural environment and therefore being part of a positive creation which leads to achieving felicity, questioning in a way everything which the modern world aimed at. This sounds like a Utopia and maybe the fact that Thoreau abandoned the woods at the end (though it was always meant as an excursion), points out to the fact that humankind will always be in search for total happiness without finally finding it. But his experience and the regarding book help the contemporary human being to question his/her attitude and adjust it, if necessary.

Urban development is remarkably important for the definition and well-being of the contemporary society, but - and this is what Faith in a Seed makes us understand - nature is stronger than any human action: Extreme heat which leads to desertification, extreme floods and hurricanes which destroy complete borrows and landscapes, natural processes which just subjugate the results of human action in a glance: Nothing is mightier than nature, which was proven lately by natural disasters worldwide.

And this conclusion leads to another important one in the contemporary context of "Walden" and Carter's project: Faith and conscious endeavor are fundamental parameters for a successful path, referring to the fact that every human being has the choice to live a respectful and sustainable, conscious life by deciding in a cognizant and voluntary way which road to take.

"If man has faith, he will cooperate with equal faith everywhere; if he has not faith, he will continue to live like the rest of the world, whatever company he is joined to." 2

— Anne-Marie Melster,
independent curator and critic,
co-founder of ARTPORT_making waves

1 Henry David Thoreau: Walden, Boston,1882, p. 142
2 Ibid., p.114

Image: Animal Experiments, 2012. Pigment print, 27,9 x 35,6 cm

Galería Arnés y Röpke
Juan de mena, 12.1D.28014 Madrid
opening hours:
Monday to Friday
10.00-14.00 / 16.00-19.00 H
Saturdays previous appointment

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