On Friday 26 February, Kunsthal KAdE opened two new exhibitions: Boom!ng Amersfoort, Ten years of construction in the city and Charlie Roberts BALLS TO THE WALL featuring KRAPP KAPP. The exhibitions are on until Sunday 25 April 2010.

Jan Grosfeld, consultant on modern and contemporary art, independent curator and himself a practising artist, gave a speech to open the Charlie Roberts exhibition BALLS TO THE WALL featuring KRAPP KAPP.

Here you find Jan Grosfeld's speech:
On account of my ideas about what makes a good host and because I want to avoid everyone but Charlie understanding my words and for him to leave the room in utter boredom as a result, I have decided to draft my text in English. I hope you will excuse me.

Charlie Roberts is an American. In 1983, he was born in Kansas, USA. He lives and works in Oslo. To be more specific, he lives with his wife in a remote natural area near a small village just outside of Oslo.
After his significant exhibition, MAMBO JAMBO, in the Rice Gallery in Houston, Texas, at the start of 2008, “Balls on the Wall” here in the rooms of Kade is in fact the first overview exhibition of Charlie Roberts’ work.
It’s a substantial exhibition covering the entire first floor and a room on the second floor, and it gives a good and full impression of Charlie Roberts’ imagery and body of work.
The show here in Amersfoort largely comprises works from private, corporate and institutional collections. This says a lot about the enthusiasm that exists for Charlie’s work in the Netherlands.

Roberts’ work isn’t difficult to grasp; or perhaps I should say, to interpret,... to read; despite its strong contemporary character. Context, content and conceptual references are often decisive in being able to place and understand contemporary art. The content and topics of Charlie’s work, however, are themes taken from the daily lives of people such as you and I. They are shared themes insofar as you and I are band members – Charlie is front man of Krapp Kapp, which we will soon be listening to – enjoy pottering about or making love and… art is part of our lives. Because these – in a nutshell – are the topics of the allegoric brush drawings and sculptures by Charlie Roberts. They are also the themes of his drawn or carved narratives, unveiled and without metaphoric references or conceptual layering.
Roberts’ drawings and sculptures are classical in the same sense as the red or black figured vase painting from Ancient Greece, a 17th century genre piece by Hendrick Avercamp, as seen recently at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, or a Japanese woodblock print by Hokusai or Andô Hiroshige.
In the same way that these masterpieces represent love, sports, leisure time, vice and virtue, these can be found in Roberts’ work. This does not, however, imply that Charlie's informal and everyday themes are in any way superficial.
The art of the imagery in his painting and sculptures, or, if you prefer, his style of painting and sculpturing, is more straightforward than conceivable. Nothing appears to be hard to paint or shape from wood for Charlie Roberts. Everything can be solved with a brush in a drawing or with an axe and a chainsaw, in wood sculpture, since these are the tools he works with. There is no problem there for Charlie Roberts, who, simultaneously, incorporates the art of those artists that he admires in his work. Anachronistically and arbitrarily quoting from art history in its entirety. In Charlie’s architectural fold-out structures, type cases and doll’s houses, we can see appear – casually and arbitrarily – similes of Bernini’s marble figures, Velasques’ paintings and the work of Duchamp, Brancusi of Picasso.
These artists and their work make their appearance and perform their roles in Charlie’s fanciful and droll backgrounds and spectacles. The performances in his work are clownish and comical, but also insane and grotesque. Without presupposing any direct influence, Charlie’s paintings are also stylistically related to the German expressionism from the inter-bellum period, although they do not share its weight. In this respect I am reminded of the paintings “Magd”, “Hafenszene” and “Älteres Liebespaarboth”, all 1922, by Otto Dix, or the thrilling painting “Selbstmord “, by George Grosz.
I am not the kind of critic who ascribes an array of unproven influences to an artist, but I simply cannot ignore the roughly hewn sculptures from the 1970s and ’80s by the Neue Wilden, Marcus Lupertz, Georg Bazelitz and A.R. Penck. Artists who, after a minimalist and conceptual period in art, were influenced by the early 20th century paintings “Die Brucke” and “Der Blaue Reiter” to re-introduce craftsmanship, intuition, individualism and powerful expression into painting.

The enigmatic brush technique, the formation of his art and the cartoonesque, comic strip-like character of C’s work, in which textual elements also play an important role, also call to mind the work of Raymond Pattibon, Robert Crumb and Anton Henning.
And yet the intuitive imagery and prosaic work of Charlie Roberts has very strong personal traits and takes an important position within current visual arts. Proportions are tilted, the complete picture appears to have been put together with arbitrary and haphazardly collated sequences, the colouring has few nuances and seems clichéd, compositions are unusually centred etc. etc. Roberts’ runaway outbursts of drawing and carving sin against all the so-called formal rules of the image. However, it is in this wayward contrariness that Charlie’s artistic intelligence reveals itself. He is sharply aware of the relations between the means of representation, the object and expression. The combination of his utter lack of inhibition, the boldness with which he applies his materials and his vigorous follow-through, make his imagery extremely accurate and captivating, resulting in a sovereign and fascinating statement.

The pleasure of viewing Roberts’ work has nothing to do with the virtuosity on display but stems from the flawless imagination and interpretation. It puts our achievements into perspective as would a Donald Duck-tale.
Despite the make-up with which we mask and polish our daily existence, we recognize in Charlie Roberts’ work the relativity of our cultural and academic heritage. This does not comprise more than a collage. And there are forces forever looming to undo these celebrated achievements in the blink of an eye, and so ridicule their vulnerability.
What is the meaning in this context of homage and adulated heraldry in the form of statues, photographs and badges? We inflate our egos hoping to be noticed by others and are under the illusion that this will actually enlarge us… It is a game.
We are comical, insignificant little creatures; extras in doll’s houses and type casts, stars only on the silver screen. However, we have an enormous capacity for imagination, take a divine pleasure in life and have a sublime sense of humour, all of which enable us to feel as if we are in control of the universe.
OK, says Charlie, with titles such as “King Forever”, “Freedom Heidi with owls” and “Freedomparty”, so long as you remember that controlling the universe and its systems takes place in our hearts and minds. It is our fancy and fantasy and… thank God; thank rock, thank art and thank love, this hallucination that make everything possible. In order to do this your name does not need to be Bernini, Velasques or Picasso but can just as well be: Charlie Roberts.

Thank you very much.