• How sad to think that nature speaks and mankind doesn’t listen.

    —Victor Hugo

  • There is a profoundly strong moment in the works of Robert Montgomery. The artist stages large parts of his work...

    Robert Montgomery, Salvage Pradise, 2021, dimensions variables

    There is a profoundly strong moment in the works of Robert Montgomery. The artist stages large parts of his work in the public space. This idea of radical publicity perhaps finds its most outspoken expression in his altering of billboard advertising spaces. From December 4 to January 29, the Scottish-born, London-based artist who stands out by bringing a poetic voice to the discourse of text art, presents the vitality and richness of his work at Danysz Gallery - Paris.

     

    Transcending the confines of contemporary cities with messages of hope, his works speak to the post-modern anxiety. They are the closest you will get to soul searching while on the run; “This is the best way we have found to live…,” stays on your mind. In a moment you will have decks, team meetings, an anxiety over someone that should DM you back. Presently you have yourself. As if stemming from a long-forgotten place of contemplation, like a ghostly whisper rooted in ancestral times, the artist’s poems subvert your well-known present.

     

    They are provocative—they call to action. And then they’re suddenly gone. Robert Montgomery’s messages have a function of “poetic subjects.” The French philosopher Guy Debord described the need for the construction of situations and their transformation into a superior passional quality as a “methodical intervention based on the complex factors of two components in perpetual interaction: the material environment of life and the comportments which it gives rise to and which radically transform it.”

  • Robert Montgomery is interested in how the spectacle in contemporary society affects our heart. Debord describes how the media and...

    Robert Montgomery, One Day, 2019, 100 x 100cm 

    Robert Montgomery is interested in how the spectacle in contemporary society affects our heart. Debord describes how the media and capitalism collaborate to overtake our senses with images that sell things and ideas. Montgomery believes that the voice of poetry can be an antidote to the voice of the spectacle. His poems are not intended to distance themselves, but rather to create a dialogue in which we can find ourselves.

    “The real point of art,” says the artist, “is to touch the hearts of strangers without all the personal trouble of having to actually meet them.”

  • Poetic Disruptions

    Robert Montgomery, Mantra Painting (Money is a Superstition), 2019, 150 x 150cm

    Poetic Disruptions

    The artist has chosen public installations to create a dialogue with the viewer in a setting that is conventionally imposing and monological. This, however, is not an attempt for a post-Duchampian irony. Montgomery’s aim is to rewaken spirituality that is genuine and tends to engage with society and politics.

     

    Verse after verse of translucent and intuitive poetry, Montgomery invites us to reflect on ways to salvage paradise, rebuilding it from wreckage and going back to a natural sense of peace through an awe-inspiring melancholic yet hopeful lyricism. 

     

    I think melancholy is really interesting, because it is the creation of beauty from sadness… It's only when we begin to destroy the planet that we realize we were living in paradise.

    —Robert Montgomery

  • Pleasure, Pain and Beauty

    Robert Montgomery, studio (detail)

    Pleasure, Pain and Beauty

    Montgomery’s poems might seem familiar to the contemporary audience used to fragmented one-sentence messages, i.e. – Twitter (or the "digital realm" as the artist puts it). However, the fragmented nature of his poems is illusional. Robert Montgomery’s messages are carefully composed into a form of subtle intervention. His texts are not reassuring. There is an element of doubt and we find ourselves searching for an answer. For what we take from each of his poems is individual and might be different each time we see the work.

  • “Now it’s a phrase applicable to no one,

    Lying just where you left it, scattered through

    Old lists, old programmes, a school prize or two,

    Packets of letters tied with tartan ribbon –

    Then is it scentless, weightless, strengthless, wholly

    Untruthful?  Try whispering it slowly.

    No, it means you […]”

    —Philip Larkin

  • For Salvage Paradise, the artist who works in a conceptual post-Situationist tradition, recreates the wealth and complexity of his universe...

    Robert Montgomery, Whenever You See the Sun, 2011, dimensions variable

    For Salvage Paradise, the artist who works in a conceptual post-Situationist tradition, recreates the wealth and complexity of his universe with light installations, paintings, woodcuts, watercolors, photographs of his fire poems (works with fire as a nod to Celtic tradition) and digital works.

     

    "In his work Robert Montgomery proves why and how poetry is of the utmost importance today, maybe more than ever. Poetry helps us link our inner world and dreams, terrors, desires… to the world around us. Poetry is sharing our inner world with the world. This is the magic of Robert Montgomery’s art."
    Barbara Polla, Writer & Art Curator

  • Robert Montgomery was born in 1972 in Scotland. He was initially inspired by the graffiti artists of East London, the...

    Robert Montgomery, The Trees Will Riot, 2019, 150 x 150cm

     Robert Montgomery was born in 1972 in Scotland. He was initially inspired by the graffiti artists of East London, the concrete poetry of Ian Hamilton Finlay, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes and Philip Larkin, but also the philosophy of Guy Debord, and the art of James Turrell. He was the British artist selected for the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2012, the first biennale in India, and the Yinchaun Biennale in 2016. He has had made public installations across Europe including major outdoor light installations on the site of the old US Air Force base at Tempelhof in Berlin. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas and the Albright Knox in New York. He has had solo museum projects at the Aspen Art Museum in Colorado, Oklahoma Contemporary in Oklahoma City, and the Cer Modern Museum in Ankara. He has worked with low consumption LED lighting and solar power since 2010 and he was one of the official artists for ArtCOP21 in Paris in 2015. His work is hugely popular on the internet, the piece “The People You Love Become Ghosts Inside of You” has been shared online more than 20 million times.

  • Watch Robert Montgomery's fire poems

    Credits: Barbara Polla & the artist
  • Stay tuned for more

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