Fred is loosely based on the characters Sol Robeson, a mathematician in the film Pi (Darren Aronofsky, 1998) and Fred Madison, a saxophonist in the film Lost Highway (David Lynch, 1997). Fred Robeson is a former architect who was born in Pahrump in 1970. While working as an architect he mostly drew houses or parts of buildings. His inspirations are Mies van der Rohe, Daniel Liebeskind and Deconstructionism. He likes to work with glass, steel and concrete. In his free time, he visits exhibitions, concerts and movies. He is a welcome and entertaining guest at the many parties he goes to. He is passionate, sophisticated, intelligent, restless, and a workaholic. He is inseparable from his daughter Lana. Fred Robeson started making art because, in addition to architecture, he was looking for a form in which his imagination, detached from the functionality and rules and regulations within architecture, could flourish. Fred wants to make art that appeals to many people and has a certain beauty.
Fred’s work focuses on the urgency to move from a more anthropocentric view to an ecocentric view. Cities and nature expand and shrink as a result of war, natural disasters and loss of cultures. More and more, though, cities and nature are being treated as currency in an explosive market for natural resources or real estate value. This human centric view needs to shift to a planet earth point of view. The fragmentary architectural and natural elements in the work refer to the different transformations our cities and environments are constantly undergoing – building, unbuilding and rebuilding our realm, creating a gentrified world. The works represent possible pasts or possible futures. Fred is slowly bringing sculptural elements into his work, often referring to nature or the materials he used in his work as an architect.
Fred’s work is closely related to where I go and what I do. His work represents landscapes and cityscapes of places where we have been: he is in the fictional realm; I am in the real world. I created him as a person or artist I would like to be. I like the idea of the romantic painter – painting every day in your studio and improving and experimenting through the making of paintings, images. I created his practice doing that. His work emerges through the process of making and not through a preconceived concept. At the same time, he likes the way I work and in particular, the constant development of new ideas and concepts. In a way Fred represents this duality of struggling with the idea of the romantic artist and the conceptual artist. Fred is me, but from his perspective.
Door de bomen het bos niet meer zien (2021)
Tree trunks, inkjet print, acrylics, varnish, 80 x 350 x 180 cm
Digital print editions 2021
We are not ourselves all of the time and we are not all of ourselves at any time 2 (2020)
Works as part of the installation We Are Not Ourselves All Of The Time And We Are Not All Of Ourselves At Any Time.
Digital print editions 2020
Residency Residency Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (2018)
In my 6-week residency in Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile I continued to work with concrete canvas and image transfers. I used real trees this time to print.
Residency
