MYTHOLOGICAL installations - Stars in line

Exposition personnelle, Galerie "Chez Valentin", 1999

Mythological installations are paintings juxtaposed to one another covering up one or more entire walls.

She's grandma before she's queen, acrylique sur toile, 200 x 300 cm, 2007

Like myths, those installations illustrate stories based on famous legends like The Iliad or The Odyssey. Jean-Christophe Robert has replaced those legends with excerpts from celebrity magazines. In lieu of heroes and gods his works show contemporary stars and celebrities. The long narrative pieces now leave space to short notes inscribed on the canvas; they are meant to be emblematic of today's news clippings. The allusion to myths is more or less evident depending on the portrait; the viewer encounters quotes from magazine titles or short sentences which may directly refer the visitor back to some mythical events - hence the fall of Karen recalls Icarus, Venus from Malibu echoes the birth of Goddess Venus, the choice of Alain alludes to Paris' choice - or elsewhere the inscriptions move away from myths.

Le triomphe de Charlotte, acrylique sur toile, 200 x 300 cm, 2006

Those pieces feature the private lives of celebrities, royal families, pop, movie or television stars, that is the privileged subject matter of the glitterati press. Most of the items concentrate on the life of the rich and the famous - wedding, separation, extra-marital love affairs, or other "events" such as holidays, parties, public outings...

Paris hilton la chute (détail), acrylique sur toile, 400 x 600 cm, 2009

Since 2002 Jean-Christophe Robert's installations have been composed of a series of one-square meter canvas paintings. The global format for one series is variable, most of the time it is a large-scale one; it gives birth to what the artist calls a "running painting" (the artist uses the term "peinture au kilomètre"). Each unit is placed frame to frame building up a sequence which, in turn, produces a narrative continuum. The installations cover a huge surface recalling the overwhelming amount of news pieces that the media impose on society today. Here the artist seems to move at a brisker pace, privileging a general ambience rather than details, precisely because he is concerned with the global rather than with the private domain.

6 m2, acrylique sur toile, 200 x 300 cm, 1999

Foire de Nice, galerie "Chez Valentin", 2001

Charles and Camilla in India, acrylique sur toile, 300 x 200 cm, 2007

Diana y croyait, acrylique sur toile, 92 x 91 cm, 1996