Robert Proch: 545 Days
After the success of Turn the Corner in late 2013 at the Chenus Longhi gallery, Robert Proch returns to Paris for his second exhibition. This new solo show — undoubtedly the Polish artist's most important to date — com-prises some forty works on canvas and paper. For the occasion, the Polish artist has continued with his research into the fragmentation of space, taking a pictorial approach that is all his own, halfway between abstraction and figuration, to the point of shattering all our cognitive re- ference points and igniting our imagination.
This exhibition settles offsite in the 600 m2 space of the Bastille Design Center (74, bd Richard Lenoir, Paris).
In his works, Robert Proch fragments space-time to better reconstruct his own pictorial reality. The spectator travels within his paintings through a narrative deconstruction, visible and understandable on multiple planes, full of depth and convergence lines. Whether you class him as part of the Graffuturism movement or Abstract Fugurative Art, Robert Proch has always defied categorisation, and like the classical painters, he is fond of depicting scenes from daily life, most often set in the urban space he loves so much.
For the 545 Days show, he publicly displays his own private life in this new body of work, showing his family in daily situations which are so ordinary they become extraordinary and creating the deepest empathy within us. From his conception to his first steps, we see the artist's child grow and develop, day after day, for exactly 545 days - the time separating the birth of his baby from the date of his exhibition opening. The show was indeed designed as a whole project and is a true declaration of love for his child. The colour scheme is noticeably warmer; the movement disrupts the surface of the canvas like a real whirlwind, reflecting the life of a small person in constant action. The notion of paternity has never before been treated with such passion and sensitivity by an artist, and no exhibition has ever exuded such a sense of universality.
