Robert van Bolderick is of both Swedish and Dutch descent, born in Stockholm, 1968.
Lives and works between France and Sweden.
Grew up in Stockholm and from age eleven in Las Palmas de Grand Canarias, Spain. Growing up in the pulse of a cosmopolitan city like Las Palmas and its mix of nationalities gave him an early interest in the various countries language and symbols that he uses in his art today.
He works as an artist mostly in mixed media that combines acrylic, oil, tempera, to the praxis of collage, it gives life to the artworks with a dreamlike and vibrant scenario. Rhythm, pattern and balance are important in his paintings. Images and text fragments stick out, but don’t give the viewer all information, just like dreams and memories are fragmented and fuzzy, just give a glimpse of what has happened.
Robert will often create an image in which the meanings of the adjacent symbols change, using hieroglyphs and cave paintings along with the modern symbols, old family pictures, notes, recent events, or historical extracts in text and images. This well-known imagery loses its inherent symbolic value and becomes part of a new image.
My abstract paintings are an expression of my fascination of symbols, contemporary street art and modern life. By using a mixed technique that combines acrylic, oil, gauche, tempera, to the praxis of collage, I give life to artworks with dreamlike and vibrant scenarios that imprison on the canvas tracks of the real and of metaphorical evocations. Rhythm, pattern and balance is important in the paintings that I make. I start each painting with a sketch and then building up layers of collage materials that consist of old and contemporary newspaper clippings and photos, old text notes and sheet music. These collage pieces are then cut and mounted on to the canvas or board in a specific way to form the underlying pattern for the painting. Like the memory, the paper and image clips are fragmented across the canvas.
This helps lay the foundation for the initial imagery and paves the way for the following applications of an impasto layers of paint. Texture, surface treatments and colour are very important aspects of my work in order for each painting to have a very profound and compelling presence.
The goal is to create a compelling work of abstract art that engages the viewer, is endlessly absorbing and promotes a meaningful dialogue. Where the images can be seen as decorative, but also give an interest to move closer to see more details.
The paintings may appear to refer to a typically Dadaist aesthetics, but at the same time they’re purged of the Dada polemic force and iconoclastic fury. In fact, the paintings colour, cut-outs, symbols of a mysterious past, like of the present, slowly emerge on the surface in a continuum of summons and recovery, composing and compressing themselves into new formal structures capable of returning the memory of reasons and feelings, and emotionally closer to the Rauschenberg’s memory to aim for a particular text and image to have an underlying meaning.
Documenting the lives and our footprint through time and what the future has to show, history repeats itself. This has happened, mixed with a dreamy, ethereal world.
Exhibitions:
Art Nou Mil·lenni Gallery, Group exhibition, Barcelona, Spain
Affordable Art Fair with Redsheep Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden
Gallery Studio Four Seasons, Stockholm, Sweden
Act Aberdeen, Mixed Bag, Group exhibition, Aberdeen, Scotland
Art Nou Mil·lenni Gallery at Hartexpo, Barcelona, Spain
Flyer Art Gallery, International group art exhibition at Caelum Gallery, New York
BIAF, Barcelona International Art Fair, Barcelona, Spain
Gallery 360 Contemporary art, Florence, Italy
Paratissima Torino, International contemporary art fair, Torino, Italy
Modern Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden
Flyer Art Gallery, Rome, Italy
Paratissima Skopje, International contemporary art fair, Skopje, Macedonia
DeeloopArts – Art Fair, Malmö/Limhamn, Sweden
Art Monaco, Monaco
DAAC gallery, Dubuque Area Arts Collective, Blurring the edges, Iowa
USEUM Exhibition, World Child Cancer Charity at Le Dame Art Gallery in London
USEUM Exhibition, Le Dame Art Gallery in London
Rochester Contemporary Art Center 6x6x, Rochester
Gallery Artmeet, Milano, Italy
Art from Sweden, EU, European Economic and Social Committee, Brussels
Gallery Mundial, San Jose, Costa Rica
Gallery Manolo Rivero, Merida, Mexico
Gallery Off Side, Stockholm, Sweden
Gallery Malle, Örebro, Sweden
Gallery Loyd, Oslo, Norway
Gallery Art Center, Stockholm, Sweden
Gallery Nybroviken, Stockholm, Sweden
54 Gallery, New York, US
Gallery Artlab, Stockholm, Sweden
Gallery Dombron, Uppsala, Sweden
Dutch Embassy, Stockholm, Sweden
Folkens Museum, Stockholm, Sweden
Folksam, Stockholm, Sweden
The Swedish Parliament, Stockholm
Art Gallery SkyCity, Stockholm, Sweden
Artist Space, New York
Gallery Ludvig, Stockholm, Sweden
Swedish Film Institute, Stockholm, Sweden
Grand Hotel, Stockholm, Sweden
Midsommargården art gallery, Stockholm, Sweden
Erik Löwenadler art, Stockholm, sweden
Polish club, Stockholm, Sweden
Botkyrka art gallery, Botkyrka, Sweden
Jakobsberg art gallery, Järfälla, Sweden
Gallery Java, Stockholm, Sweden
Gallery Lilla, Östersund, Sweden
Stockholm Food Factory art gallery, Stockholm, Sweden
Kitchen & a bar, Stockholm, Sweden
Scandinavian Club, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain
Publications:
Art Reveal Magazine
Lenz Magazine
Aestetica Magazine
Månads Journalen
Örebro Kuriren
Nerkes Allehanda
Svenska Dagbladet
