Simple Moments of Before and After
Simple Moments of Before and After is strikingly bleak. This is not so much because of the monochrome scheme of the assemblages as much as their coarse textures. These works are roughly hewn, deliberately exposing the varied media which form them. Wood, though painted, is unsanded; metal sheets bare welding scars; and the surface on which Kinder has drawn his charcoal images is clearly papier mâché. It bubbles and crinkles and reveals at its ratty edges the newsprint beneath. Robert Kinder is the antithesis of the artist who refines his presentation, hoping to bury the materiality of the work under the patina of careful craft. Rather, the brutally obvious materiality of Simple Moments is an essential element, an expression of Kinder's view of the world. And Kinder is reconstructing this world from shattered fragments; not refining out but building toward.
Which explains to a large extent the bleakness. The exposed materiality and the almost unvarying scheme of black and white reminded me of demolition sites or bombed-out houses. With these the spectator might dimly reconstruct the identity of the building from its exposed and smashed materials-the rubble of plaster, bricks, timber and pipes and the broken shells of walls. Similarly, standing before Kinder's art the spectator must salvage something from the wreckage and rebuild an identity from fragments
Certainly, "that which is omitted" is crucial to these works. The spectator is never given the entire story. In a statement released with the exhibition, Kinder writes of "the lure of gaps, breaks, splinterings, broken hinges" the non-existent content of art; its suggestibility. And speaking to Kinder about his work confirmed to me this commitment to the spectator's moment. He