For Andy Robert, (b. 1984 in Les Cayes; lives and works in New York, NY) abstraction can address the mediation of entangled histories, images, and narratives that give form to contemporary reality. The artist’s oil impasto paintings treat the representation of a person, place, or scene as contingent or as a moment in flux, sometimes furthering this effect by breaking the composition’s continuity across multiple canvases.
For the 58th Carnegie International, Robert devotes several expansive, uninterrupted compo- sitions to address fractured histories, cultures of displacement, and related matters of move- ment, transportation, expropriation, and logistics that have shaped the modern Western world. The artist has created frames made from doors he found on his many walks roaming around New York City, imagining paintings as passageways and reflecting on home and the impossibility of return.
And once the dice is thrown what possibility is there; who can predict calling where and knowing what will land, and/or predict what game is truly at play? Once the game gets going all bets are final. It is all a gamble of a shipwreck; a roulette, a game of life and death—who knows where the subject will land? Please just send word that you made it safe okay? I’ll pray one day you’ll return back whole, grown strong and in one piece. Until then I remain shattered.
—Andy Robert
