Robert Hromec: Inside a Time Capsule January 2018

A catalogue accompanying Slovak mixed-media artist Robert Hromec’s exhibition at the Bratislava based gallery Galéria Nedbalka featuring six large-scale paintings on a particularly large aluminum sheet of 1 x 2 m and eight paintings on a half-sized aluminum sheet. These aluminum rectangles inspired the title of the exhibition, as the artist imagined his paintings as a kind of time capsule reflecting life in today’s world that delivers the necessary information about our present realities to future generations.

During the 20th century, time capsules of various sorts (usually made of metal boxes) were buried or otherwise secured within building structures. They contained a selection of objects considered typical or indicative of their time. They were created so that the objects included in the box would be discovered, examined, and studied by future generations. The practice of creating time capsules was particularly popular during mid-century, when interest in the lives of generations to come and of other life forms and other universes was particularly strong; in fact, a number of these time capsules were sent into outer space.

The glistening metal that Hromec uses in his paintings carries the suggestion of that bright and shiny future fantasy. In that sense his paintings are of this technological moment and, at the same time, futuristic. They are also arguably “retro” in that this use of aluminum recalls the styles, fashions, and product designs of the 1950s and 60s, a period of great social optimism and excitement about the future.

While Hromec’s work is in mixed media — he combines painting and collage with various sorts of intaglio printmaking techniques — surely the most striking aspect of the work is his choice of highly polished aluminum as his “canvas.” His background in lithography and intaglio has allowed him to engage in this new form of mixed-media art-making with a consummate knowledge of that unusual material, aluminum, which is the basis of his work. He sands his plates, scratches his plates, drills his plates, and often buffs, gouges, and stamps them with various tools. Similarly his life work in graphic design endows his paintings with a solid compositional structure and a bold color sense. In its formal sophistication, innovative use of materials, and atmospheric vitality, the work questions traditional painting even as it adheres to two different traditions — printmaking and painting.