French artist Jimmy Robert creates mental and physical spaces of reference for dealing with questions of cultural and social identity. He uses both found and own photographs, texts, video sequences, 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 them.

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 and recognizable as a construction. Jimmy Robert knows the mechanisms of social reference systems, which are instruments of distinction and demarcation, of hierarchies and domination.

At Leopold-Hoesch-Museum in Düren Jimmy Robert creates a spatial installation that is based on texts written and adapted by the artist himself and relating to former performances of the artist. They are associative by nature and their content can be read as reflections on body, gesture, role, place, and function. The texts are displayed in the exhibition as sculptural elements of varying degrees. They form monumental or small-format wall writings, appear as printed works on large paper rolls or are inscribed as negative forms on their material. All of these texts, which are essential to Jimmy Robert's artistic thinking, appear in the form of an artist's book that relates them to photographs of former performances and forms an exhibit in itself. The written language corresponds with new, sculpturally processed photographs of the artist as a dancer that act on wooden platforms both as bodily presences and as representatives of what they are showing.

Finally, an interaction between the visual and textual levels is created by the performance "Songs to dance to", which Jimmy Robert has conceived especially for being performed in the framework of the exhibition at Leopold-Hoesch-Museum Düren and which will be brought to the stage by Düren based singer Ina Hagenau. Performance and installation thus unite to form a space of reflection and resonance for the contents, thoughts and encounters that Jimmy Robert's works deal with and which acquire meaning for the individual and for the community. A specific reference to the location is created through the integration of objects selected by the artist from the collections of the Leopold-Hoesch-Museum Düren and the associated Paper Museum Düren. These become integral parts of the installation and mark its contextual approach while the compilation of the current survey of works from the collection with works of modern and contemporary art shown parallel to the exhibition “Jimmy Robert – Plié” reacts to it in a much broader sense.

Curated by Markus Mascher