Jimmy Robert was born in Guadeloupe in 1975 and currently lives and works in Bucharest. His multidisciplinary practice encompasses performance, photography, film, video and drawing. Robert typically uses photography as a starting point for his works on paper, breaking down the divisions between two and three dimensions, as well as image and object. In some works Robert uses found photographs that he tears, collages, tapes and crumples before digitally scanning them and pinning them to the wall. In other works, Robert takes new photographs in his studio and crams them into wooden boxes or arranges them on the gallery floor. His sculptures similarly give the illusion of paper forms and often play with notions of value and durability. Integrated within his photographic and sculpture practice, performance remains a central part of Robert’s work. His dance and performance works also oscillate between image and objecthood as well as the personal and the political.
Jimmy Robert, Metallica, 2007. Courtesy of the artist, Tanya Leighton, Berlin and Stigter van Doesburg, Amsterdam