Jimmy Robert: Plié

The French artist Jimmy Robert (*1975 in Guadeloupe, lives and works in Berlin) creates mental and physical spaces of reference for dealing with questions of cultural and social identity. He uses both found and own photographs, texts, videos, sculptural settings as well as performances and he integrates basic materials such as fabric, wood or paper which he processes manually by folding, cutting, perforating or layering. By emphasizing the specific properties of his materials, he refers to the exhibition architecture and provides essential meanings to these elements within his installations. They become partners in the performative process and he thus abolishes the distinction between object and body, image and space. In doing so, socially defined and culturally as well as physically effective boundaries, which can be assigned to origin, gender or class, are made perceivable, their claim is simultaneously questioned as well as recognizable as a construction. Jimmy Robert knows the mechanisms of social reference systems, that are instruments of distinction and demarcation, of hierarchies and domination.