Working on the intersection of cultural and private reminiscences, multidisciplinary autodidact artist Robin Child (THE KID) explores the affect of American tradition, mass media and the disillusioned promise of “happiness” carried by the American dream in “Looking out For America” at TEMPLON NYC. It’s a private endeavor through which he interrogates what America represents immediately in comparison with the idealized picture created by the media throughout childhood—and extra particularly, his childhood. On the similar time, the exhibition is reflective of a long-standing nationwide identification disaster, questioning the nation’s transient historical past in an effort to uncover the basic cultural pillars and occasions that also form our notion of what an American really is. In that sense, KID’s work mirrors what Bruce Springsteen as soon as noticed through the Wrecking Ball press convention in February 2012: “I’ve spent my life judging the gap between American actuality and the American dream.”
On the event of this debut solo presentation within the U.S., Observer spoke with the artist to delve deeper into the meanings and messages of those new works and the way his view of America has advanced—shifting from promise to disillusion over time.
As is typical within the artist’s observe, KID presents a collection of bold large-scale works on this present, demonstrating his talent at staging whole semiological and societal dynamics. He creates theatrical settings that seamlessly mix set up, portray, craftsmanship and multimedia. Neither strictly portray nor sculpture, KID’s hybrid items mix metal panels and aluminum sculptures with oil portray to supply highly effective, provocative, toylike billboards that invade the viewer’s area, projecting a set of imposed needs via completely balanced commercials which might be without delay eye-popping and menacing. Scale is a pure a part of KID’s course of, together with his work drawing closely from the aesthetics of billboards and different aggressive promoting methods designed to be observed, providing no risk of escape.
“As a toddler, I used to be impressed by billboards, these subsequent to the freeway and film ones,” KID defined. “It imprinted on me as a toddler; these large billboards had one thing magical for me.” He additionally has an unimaginable potential to world-build—a expertise he developed on the similar time. “I all the time wished to create a universe I might step into as a result of I didn’t slot in at college. I simply wished to create a world through which to flee. And it’s one thing that I all the time have continued and drives my work.”
KID was raised by his grandparents in a small mining city in southern Holland. “Everybody there has single brick homes. It’s a really grey setting, and every part feels the identical,” he mentioned. Regardless of this, his grandparents surrounded him with an enormous array of cultural objects and books, additional enriched by tv, offering him with all the weather to think about his personal world. “It was actually just like the cavern of Alibaba as a result of it was a mix of a number of generations of objects, toys and books.” This mix of influences might clarify why a lot of KID’s work is infused with a way of nostalgia, reflecting a classic period of media slightly than the up to date one acquainted to millennials. He acknowledged that the nostalgia so many individuals are feeling is just not for their very own period however slightly from one they by no means knew—linked to childhood reminiscences created via publicity to imagery from an older time.
The America that KID conjures on this exhibition is extra of a “platonic one”—a magical world recognized solely via the fantastical merchandise of its cultural exports, crammed with the enjoyment of Comfortable Meals, the sugar rush of Kellogg’s Pops and the timeless attract of Disney cartoons. “Many of those outdated photographs had been promising one thing, had been a chief of freedom,” he defined. Extra importantly, KID’s observe engages in a multigenerational reflection on this cultural and mass media propaganda, tracing its roots again to the interval of the German occupation and the struggle. “Being raised by my grandparents, America was very current in my family. My grandmother lived within the South of Holland, and through the occupation, they’d American troopers residing of their home. She would present me poetry they had been writing to her. This concept of America was all the time related to freedom, with one thing very optimistic. I grew up with this concept of America as a protector.” Distinction that together with his grandfather’s expertise in German-occupied northern Holland. “He was the one Dutch little one in a German college, which was horrible. He would assist Jewish individuals cross the border at evening as a result of he had a automobile.”
This narrative of America as protector has been meticulously crafted by promoting and mass media, shaping the morals, fears and expectations of generations worldwide. As youngsters, we don’t query the fact behind it, or acknowledge it as a calculated gentle energy operation that evolves into cultural imperialism, already carrying the seeds of interventionism, militarism, capitalist extractivism, inequality and a harmful homogenization that manipulates up to date historical past. We’re naive as youngsters, desperate to imagine, soak up and embrace one of the best. It’s exactly such a naivete that KID’s work performs with, whereas additionally confronting, via a extra important lens, the complicated implications and messages hidden beneath these seemingly comforting photographs of wealth, pleasure and happiness.
SEE ALSO: Rachel Martin Is ‘Bending The Guidelines’ at Hannah Traore Gallery
Nonetheless, his artwork isn’t an assault however a nostalgic eager for the creativeness and beliefs that had been misplaced. “Looking for America is about on the lookout for the form of happiness that I felt as a toddler, like sitting in entrance of the TV watching, you recognize, Disney specials,” he defined. It’s a happiness that exists earlier than understanding the broader implications of such a system and the complicated actuality of what America is immediately, each internally and in its function in latest world occasions. “I don’t wish to current a pessimistic viewpoint on my work. I’m simply attempting to mirror what I see. The whole lot I do comes from a love for America. I like the thought of America I had, and it’s imaginary. However now I additionally know the place this comes from.”
On this sense, all of KID’s work will be seen as an try to protect and revive the iconography of Americana that he discovered by coronary heart in his childhood, letting the contradictions of American materialism and consumerist propaganda reveal themselves when staged in an area meant for important engagement, like a gallery. Resurrecting, reactivating and confronting this symbolic code of acquainted manufacturers, cartoons, slogans and aesthetics turns into a technique to query the semiotic mechanisms and dynamics behind them. Because the artist sharply noticed, “I believe my work addresses a whole lot of guarantees made via the commercials that I noticed: purchase this product, and your life can solely develop into greater, higher, more healthy. It’s a steady promise that the long run can solely be higher. Now, we’re at a degree the place ours is the primary era worse off than our dad and mom, financially and in any other case. Our future seems a lot much less shiny.”
In bringing ahead this provocation, KID is wittingly adopting the identical language utilized by promoting and political propaganda, which hyperlinks his observe to the pioneer artists in assemblages, combining mass media appropriation as Jim Dine, Robert Rauschenberg and course, Andy Warhol have completed. Equally, his creative course of is predicated on an infinite appropriation of photographs, objects and merchandise that symbolically symbolize our era. At evening, he sifts via listings on eBay to purchase Americana, magazines and different classic parts. In the course of the day, whereas he paints, he all the time has the TV on, always drawing inspiration from this infinite flux of photographs and symbols. “I begin portray at eight o’clock within the morning, and on the tv, I begin with Good Morning America, Morning Joe, Rachel Maddow and Joey Reed,” he mentioned. “Then I proceed with documentaries and films. All through the day, I’m all the time screenshotting. I’m all the time taking issues from in all places.” Hello picks via these photographs, cuts them and extrapolates them with Photoshop from the unique context to remediate them, reducing wooden and portray in new visible assemblages, which, although dialectical juxtapositions, typically reveal new meanings.
KID clearly acknowledges these legacies, however he sees his method as nearer to the skepticism of a European cohort, extra aligned with the capitalist realist motion, with artists like Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter, who overtly explored how the varied types of imagery—promoting, information, and many others.—don’t merely depict actuality however actively form it, full with transmission errors. The artist additionally notes that his commentary on the infinite movement of visuals and media comes from a distinctly totally different generational perspective. “I believe Warhol was simply the premise of our era,” he mused. “Our era is not literate from studying books, however from the 1000’s of photographs we obtain each day.” On the similar time, KID’s course of is exclusive to this period, mixing digital manipulation via Photoshop with the genuine craftsmanship of laboriously engaged on wooden and portray by hand.
That multifaceted observe appears completely suited to handle the anxieties and considerations of a era that has come to just accept the chaotic media and ideological panorama as one thing to navigate with the best important instruments—analyzing the previous and the roots of those phenomena whereas utilizing humor as a method to subvert actuality, expose absurdities, problem norms and doubtlessly create area for brand spanking new methods of considering and various potentialities of “world-building” past the American promise and dream. The present displays a whole nation and era trying to find new fashions of diplomacy, commerce and cultural change.
ROBIN KID’s “Looking out For America” is on view at TEMPLON NYC via October 26.
