GOYA DEEP / GOYA FLAT

Characterized by an experimental approach to drawing using a wide range of art-historical references, styles, and subject matter, the art of Robert Kraiss is imbued with contradictions. With a general skepticism towards his chosen content, the works in Goya Deep / Goya Flat draw from a vast repertoire of images culled from iconographic masterworks, trashy pulp magazines and superhero comic books in a creative exchange that simultaneously moves between ironic distancing and reverence.

The artist's method of engaging with both high and low subject matter to serve as a catalyst for experimentation finds its roots in the work of postwar German artists, such as Sigmar Polke, whose radical departure from traditional art materials draws parallels to Kraiss' innovative mechanical drawing processes. The artist employs various distancing techniques -- rotary power sanders, colored pencils attached to hand-held drills -- which recall the repetitive nature of commercial production and question the notion of individuality implicit in the medium of drawing (recently, the artist has begun pushing these notions of authorship with the "use" of assistants for drawing.)  Ironically, these deliberately automated processes result in a panorama of colored marks that are highly individualistic, expressive and strikingly delicate.

This reliance on experimentation and improvisational method also play a central role in the artist's musical compositions that accompany this exhibition. Often in collaboration with other artists or musicians, Kraiss' use of synthesized and computer generated noise combined with traditional and unconventional musical instruments are important to the artist's practice.  Kraiss states that his explorations into sound are a "clear reference to maybe my most central source of inspiration, and probably the most important." This singular methodology, employed across very different mediums, are a result of Kraiss' fascination with a kind of mechanized poeticism, and a considered interplay between automation and authenticity.