Robert Strati

Windmills in Dreams

2025

Robert Strati is an American artist who creates multimedia artworks using broken plates. His recent series “Fragmented” started when he accidentally drop...

Robert Strati is an American artist who creates multimedia artworks using broken plates. His recent series “Fragmented” started when he accidentally dropped and broke a porcelain pla...

Robert Strati is an American artist who creates multimedia artworks using broken plates. His recent series “Fragmented” started when he accidentally dropped and broke a porcelain pla...

Robert Strati is an American artist who creates multimedia artworks using broken plates. His recent series “Fragmented” started when he accidentally dropped and broke a porcelain pla...

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” ― Albert Einstein. Always working with graphite and charcoal, Robbie Cornelissen’s limited palette emphasises the stark sombre nature of his metaphysical drawings, The Undertow is his sixth solo exhibition at Art Mûr. At the centre of the exhibition hovers Terra Nova, a dark and desolate world parallel to our own. Robbie Cornelissen’s drawings, such as The Space of Absence and Thriller, seem to pull from the stop motion’s frames. Other images, made especially for The Undertow isolate key fragments; the cloud, mounds and timeless dwellings, Cornelissen’s signature technical interest. In addition to his methodical approach, Cornelissen uses the written word, scrawling and erasing terms repeatedly, in English, French, and German, these fastidious markings and exact translations leave a trace and a glitch on paper and screen. Much of his existing work includes words and phrases like “tribunal,” “myself when I am real” and “the need to disappear.” Do they identify what forms, systems and sentiments that are, or could be present? Or do they warn of what is to come? Suspended in the atmosphere of a planetary body, Cornelissen’s clouds extend down to the surface, looming over Earth and Terra Nova. But are they harmless clouds, or associated with nuclear explosions? And is that the ash, dust, pollution and detritus of these invented places, the remnants of an unsustainable society, a dream factory? Or the promise of life anew? In weather forecasting, or aeromancy, the presence of clouds can promise darkness and gloom, but they can also bring cleansing. The ominous aura of the grid, an applied system and structure used by many, including draughtsmen, architects, urban planners, designers and artists to organise and sometimes classify information, is a recurring element in his work. The grid can be observed from a distant bird’s eye view, or close up, allowing Cornelissen’s large format drawings...

Mid-century French ink drawing of scenic windmills by artist Jean Baptiste Grancher (1911-1974). Original artwork on paper displayed on a white mat with a gold border. Archival plas...

With a career spanning more than three decades, Robbie Cornelissen has established himself among the leading contemporary draughtsmen in Europe. His vast and irresolute creative universe demonstrates the complexity of a world dealing with new spatial concepts. Every corner of the planet may have been explored, but digital technologies have opened up an endless universe to discover, a virtual labyrinth without an exit in which one can easily get lost. His drawings often serve vertiginous perspectives out of which emerge distressing voids that refer more to metaphorical states of mind than physical spaces. Cornelissen’s works offer an exploration of these fields and are therefore often viewed as places of anxiety. They could easily be interpreted as portraits of a technophobic mind, alarmed by the speeds and heights of our advanced neoliberal societies. But for some, the volatility of these spaces is also incredibly exciting – liberating even. Cornelissen represents a world in which things are freed from the pragmatism of their usage to exist simply for the interest of their geometry. This is particularly true of architecture, the prime subject of his artistic research. In many ways, Cornelissen’s technique is very classical. His expertise of linear perspective takes root in the heritage of Quattrocento Masters of the likes of Pietro Perugino...

Robbie Cornelissen is one of the leading contemporary draughtsmen in the Netherlands. Cornelissen has established a reputation for the monumental, architectural drawings that he has ...