Return on Invest: Robin de Goede
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On the website of Robin de Goede (1978) a citation by Philip Peters can found, in which the work of De Goede is compared to that of an alchemist. Alchemists looked for the formula to turn base metals into gold. In a way, artists are alchemists. Out of ordinary, sometimes even found materials, they make something that is worth more than the sum of the materials.
De Goede makes photographs, videos and draws. Sometimes the subject of his work is people from a specific scene, sometimes it is recently abandoned, dehumanised landscapes. While the photographs he made in Japan of tattooed bodies, for example, are hyperlocalised (they can only be made in that place), his landscapes are displaced and could be found, as a matter of speaking, anywhere. The fullness of the former contrasts with the desolation of the latter.
Return on Invest exhibits De Goede's video Ruin Value from 2010, a silenced video of a bunkers along the North Sea in Denmark. Monolithic concrete structures slowly pass us by without judgment, without context. The title refers to the idea of the architect Albert Speer (who built for the Third Reich) that a building should be constructed so that its ruins can still be impressive. Those buildings of Speer were never built, but the ruins of the bunkers are everywhere, with their own rugged aesthetics.
www.robindegoede.com
