Paul Robas work starts from the inherent fascination toward small, seemingly insignificant interactions and the way they are affected by global events that, in a way, change and shape the human condition. Events that are universal in character and sometimes intimate but nonetheless interrelated. This mundane imagery, influenced by "external forces", interacting through associations and symbols, creates a new narrative, a new language within a broader contextual spectrum. Through the pictorial process these events are modified by subjective vision, inaccurate recollection, or are simply reimagined. The result is a re-contextualized representation that the viewer is invited to interpret. Inspiration comes from casual experiences that are documented through photography or sketches, like a visual diary. The figures that populate his works are depicted both accurately and abstractly, creating a representative dynamic that challenges the traditional aesthetics of painting.
It is also a reflection and an attempt to make sense of the world, to create a narrative from fragments of everyday life. Most of the paintings have an eerie, dreamlike atmosphere.
The shifting figures evoke a faded or uncertain memory. Robas nurtures an interest in the way social events are becoming increasingly more abstract and irrational, and in how people often just play along without fully grasping their sur-roundings. In this accelerated situation there is often no time to explain what is happening,
— Vincent Vanden Bogaard
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