VoCA wishes you a very Happy New Year!

While we were sunning ourselves in beautiful Costa Rica, Bill Clarke, writer, collector and FoV (Friend of VoCA) caught up with Toronto artist Robert Waters in Mexico City, where Waters currently resides.

Since receiving his BFA, with honors, from York University in 1998, Waters’ work has been exhibited in Spain, Mexico and Canada.

Waters’ drawings are influenced by his interest in collage. In his best-known work, Waters begins with brown packing tape and uses it as a background for portraits and life drawings drawn with thick black line using permanent marker. Waters adds highlights to his figures by cutting away areas of the tape, revealing the paper beneath.

Robert Waters, Beauty and the Beast, 2007. Image: pmgallery.ca

Robert Waters, Beauty and the Beast, 2007. Image: pmgallery.ca

The following chat took place over pastor tacos and glasses of mescal:

BC: So, how is Mexico City treating you?

RW: It’s hard to complain.

BC: Is living here influencing your work?

RW: It definitely is. Mexico is a remarkably vibrant culture. There is a general creativity borne of necessity here. You often see materials used for purposes other than their original intent. For example, there’s a construction site not far from where I live, and old oil drums have been joined together to make garbage chutes and buckets have been modified to make strands of lampshades. I like to use materials in a similar way. Also, Catholicism is a very visual culture, and Mexico is almost 90 percent Catholic. A big part of that is blood, gore, violence and death, which is much different from my protestant upbringing!

BC: Jesus has appeared frequently in your work lately. Is this because images of Jesus are everywhere in Mexico City?

RW: I had some ideas for Jesus-related projects before moving here, but I have been inspired in many different ways. I’m interested in exploring the physical body and its transcendence, and Jesus is Western culture’s primary example of both. I’ve also been interested in exploring artistic ideas of copying and how ideas are interpreted and retransmitted. Taking ideas from someone else and interpreting as your own. There is a vast history of Jesus being depicted in art, so the subject is a broad enough for me to combine the present with the past. It’s a way of working within an artistic tradition, but also to comment on it in a contemporary context.

Robert Waters, Willem Dafoe (from The Last Temptation of Christ, 1988), 2007.
Image: pmgallery.ca

Robert Waters, Enrique Rambal Jr. (from El Martir del Calvario, 1952), 2007.
Image: pmgallery.ca

BC: What do you think that contemporary context is?

The entire history of the Western world is based on Christianity and that context has been power and, until recently, unquestionable authority. Christianity is at a point where that power is being challenged, especially by science and philosophy. The advancement of scientific thought and methods which require proof, unlike religion that doesn’t require proof, has certainly undermined Christianity. My work is part of the questioning of the historical supremacy of Christianity.

BC: At your recent show at PM Gallery in Toronto, you showed a series of portraits of actors, such as Jeffrey Hunter and Willem Dafoe, in the role of Jesus in movies. How did this come about?

RW: Ultimately I wanted to point out that we know very little about Jesus and that our understanding of him is very subjective. I used red wine, obviously symbolic of Christ’s blood, as the medium to portray different actors in the role of Jesus Christ. I wanted to contrast symbolic meaning with personal interpretation. This series is best seen as a group, illustrating the dichotomy of a single historical figure, Jesus, being played by many different men.

BC: There were also four large paper works entitled What You Can’t See. What were those about?

RW: They all represent Jesus’s loincloths from Renaissance paintings that I’ve only seen in reproductions. I thought the loincloth was an appropriate symbol for that which can’t be known. Primarily I was thinking of faith, but it also represents the denial of sexuality within Christianity. The loincloths are meant to be coverings, but by rendering them in cut paper, their original intent is subverted.

Robert Waters, What you can’t see (from The Baptism of Christ by Masolino da Pinicale, c. 1435), 2007.
Image: pmgallery.ca

Robert Waters, What you can’t see (from The Baptism of Christ by Pierro Della Francesca, c. 1415), 2007.
Image: pmgallery.ca

BC: You’ll be exhibiting in Spain in February, 2008. Do you know what you are planning to show?

RW: The group exhibition, at Artium in Vitoria, is about site-specific projects. I’ll be making a Man at Computer installation, which is an ongoing series made of strips of packing tape adhered to the wall, with an image cut from the tape to reveal the white museum wall underneath. The image is always a man at his computer, alone at night, and usually undressed. I’ve already got some models lined up in Vitoria.

Robert Waters, Man at Computer XVII, 2007. Image: pmgallery.ca

BC: Good luck with that. More mescal?

RW: Si, caballero!…

Robert Waters is represented by PM Gallery, in Toronto. Please click HERE for the gallery website.