Robert Hromec – Inside a Time Capsule
Manual communication using hand gestures is to mediate a message between persons and the surrounding world. As a primary form of communication it may be enhanced by optical illusion coming out of the surface.
Robert Hromec has always been regarded on the Slovak art scene as a solitary seeker after a specific style. In 2011 he replaced a classical canvas with an aluminium plate. From the very beginning it was clear that it was a major change in the way of his artistic thinking. The exhibition presents the artist´s latest works from the period of 2016 – 2017 made using a very demanding technique. Several of the largescale square paintings feature a solid aluminium rectangle attached to their surface. The artist has imagined his painting as a sort of time capsule reflective of the experience of life in today’s world, one that will carry vital information about our present-day reality to the next generation. Hromec seems to suggest that to live in our time is to live without certainty. In art as in politics, the old orders are breaking down, and a new, definitive order is yet to emerge; we exist, for the moment, in tension and chaos. But in this moment of destabilization there is also a great opportunity for the individual hand and mind to explore with far more freedom, and find beauty in new ways. In his latest printpaintings, with aluminum plate used as the base, optical illusion plays an important role.
Art historian Ivan Jančár finds many distinctive opposites in Hromec´s works that highlight the artist´s effort to break free from any rules or barriers.
Publikácia:Robert Hromec – Vnútri časovej kapsuly, autor textov: Ivan Jančár, Rick Kinsel, Giacomo Marco Valerio, Martina Campese, Dorothea Jeger, Anton Divácký; počet strán: 72; väzba: mäkká; rok vydania 2018