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Robert Kinder's works struck me as interestingly enigmatic. His use of newspaper clippings, all of which involved varying degrees of violence, correlates with his formal commentary upon the limits of ordered composition.
All of which might correspond with what Baudrillard refers to as the "ecstasy" of communication which, in its most obscene form, is capable of subsuming extreme violence into the flaccid or elastic boundaries of what we like to call "morality". But there remained in my mind a certain perplexity as to the manipulation of formal qualities, for example the way in which highly rational visual elements such as technical drawing apparatus or typographical elements were metamorphosed into expressive drawings. Such contradictions drove me to the catalogue essay, by Urszula Szulakowska, in order to better understand the exhibition.
Initially I found it interesting that the catalogue was subtitled "Aiterity and the Space of Representation: Empiricism/Philosophical Justification in the Work of Robert Kinder". This seemed to suggest that the works were not intended to stand alone but, rather, must involve some form of support from contemporary theory. Yet when I tried to apply Szulakowska's essay to an interpretation of Kinder's work any meaning or justification seemed to retreat even further.
The essay begins by stating that in 1984 Kinder's work was involved in "the operation of space depicted as a semi-'open' organization Robert Kinder. T h e execut l of the monochrone, shifting forms". This is certainly evident in Kinder's current work, as too is his investigation of "the limits which are placed around fluid situations". And the latest theoretical basis, Szulakowska informs us, is derived from the writing of Jaoques Derrida, "among others".
Kinder, according to Szulakowska, is investigating