Constellation

Indeed repetition and seriality characterise many avant-garde movements, from the Impressionists to minimalist and conceptual art, and exemplify various heterogeneous artistic paths. Talking about seriality means identifying a grid (conceptual and/or con-crete) in an artist’s work that is reiterated repeatedly but never definitively closed. Beyond what we are led to think, while a series undoubtedly springs from a systematic decision on the artist’s part, it is something that is intrinsically open.

Robert Pan’s latest works, and in particular those created specifically for the Bolzano museum, give rise to a system of constants, inside which there are variables that operate with great freedom and without any form of hierarchy. Underlying this is a strategy that regards form and contents and becomes a sort of centrepiece that unites individuality with universality.

In Robert Pan’s case his meticulous, labour-intensive work with resin, which is left to harden then ground down repeatedly, with continuous additions and subtractions of material, corresponds to the “invariable” component within which variations of colour are generated.

His method is characterised by order and discipline, crowned by an obsession/passion that leads the artist to engage repeatedly with the creative urge and challenge the basic structure every time. Once the work has been created, the artist goes back to work, to the same process that produced that specific creation, but does not end there, because the work of art is not an endpoint, but a step in an ongoing process.