ROBERT WEISS
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About the Artist
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Robert Weiss was born in Galveston, Texas in 1983. He moved to Dallas to attend Booker T. Washington High School for Performing and Visual Arts. After Graduating high school, he moved to Baltimore to attend the Maryland Institute College of Art to study Painting and Printmaking. After receiving his BFA in printmaking, Robert relocated back to Texas where he taught painting, drawing, film and ceramics at Ball High School in Galveston. Robert, along with his students at Ball High School, created a film titled Ike: A Documentary The Story of A torn City Rebuilt by Everyday Heroes. The film reveals the devastating and catastrophic effects Hurricane Ike impacted Galveston with and the incredible resilience of the community following. During that time he was honored to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award as well as the Teacher of the Year Award from Galveston Independent School District for his notable work on the documentary and with the students. Following his 5-year teaching career in Galveston, Robert then went on to receive his MFA from Syracuse University in New York where he studied painting and drawing under Jerome Witkin. During that time he worked as an Associate Professor of drawing for 2 years. Today, Robert currently teaches film at the Episcopal School of Dallas while continuing to work on his own short narrative films, documentaries and paintings. During his summers he works on collaborative film projects in France and attends artist residency programs with an emphasis on painting and drawing. Robert is co-founder of Exposition Gallery, an independent gallery that presents works by contemporary artists in historic Exposition Park.
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Artist Statement
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Paintings are repositories of human intention that make permanent something that could be lost. My work is a combination of allegory and technical processes that work together to form a tableau that hint at artistic and historical references. These tableaus become an amalgamation of ideas, styles, representations and processes, with layers of disconnected symbols and objects. I forcibly connect themes and techniques with the intent to initiate a deeper exploration of the narratives that are sparked by viewing them.
Painting becomes a way to absolve my knowledge of art history and the plastic arts, challenging my preconceived notions on the formal rules established through educational discipline, highlighting my skepticism of the art world and postmodernism. In my work I incorporate a breadth of subject matter that can guide the choices I make through my processes and material handling; through deliberate employment of artistic variations, my process helps me expand the possibilities of the representation in my content. The painting itself becomes a conduit for creative thought. It is my belief that the best paintings relate to each other throughout the span of history, and this dialogue is revealed through the way in which each piece was created in conjunction with its subject matter. Artifacts can be difficult to explicate from their context in history, evident in ancient cultures forgotten to history except for objects we discover after their time. Creating art that incorporates elements of these relics underlines their import in the context of art’s evolution over time, while creating a fresh dialogue for the artifacts within the framework of the art it influenced. If image-making is a form of non-verbal dialogue that stretches from man’s early cave paintings to the modern museum installation, giving deeper insights into the interests and rites of man throughout history, then my image-making reveals a desire to be considered within this lineage of great art while at the same time aiding me in the pursuit of understanding my own complex needs and those of the society in which I live. Many of my tableaus can be considered a form of “set dressing,” with a stage and emphasis on space coordination, turned surreal by the juxtaposition of recognizable designs, and made further surreal by the malleability of paint’s nature, allowing for the reproduction of objects and non-objects alike in such a way as to create a seemingly very real physical presence between them. Each application of paint is like building a compost pile: the material becomes the rich organic material to grow an image. The viewer investigates the symbolic gestures of the painting, from pigments to content, through suggestions or negations of space; allegory and material work together to maximize an experience. I work through my skepticism of political structures, the art world, and postmodernism, with intent to build an emotional climate for the viewer to enter; there is no overt narrative to attribute to the work. At the point it is observed, my artistic choices stack up and compound, inducing an exploration for clarity, with intention as a means of realization. |
