Studio Visit: Sarah Robin
“La collaboration fait la force!” Sarah Robin enthusiastically shouts out during our conversation at her brand-new studio in Sint-Gillis/Saint-Gilles. Her distinctive and versatile work stems from a healthy dose of curiosity, a lust for innovation, and an open, vivacious spirit. “I like to touch on all subjects. It opens my spirit to other artistic environments and makes my own work progress. We have all received training, but then you have to continue developing. I still work as a graphic designer, but I only got where I am now thanks to the encounters and collaborations.”
As an illustrator and designer, Sarah Robin gradually developed a highly distinctive style using her silk screen. “I used to make little stories, working from a narrative foundation. My roots are in illustration, and I have very much enjoyed approaching images in various different ways, making compositions and stories. That is my illustrative démarche.” The shift in her approach to the image occurred in part thanks to an encounter with the Brussels-based fashion designer Conni Kaminski, with whom she has been collaborating for a few years now. “When I met Conni and started working with her, it totally transformed my way of ‘thinking the image’. I was suddenly forced to take flexibility into account, and to abandon my frameworks. I learned to use connecting pieces – all kinds of associated motives. There lies the seed of that different approach to the image.”
Sarah Robin's work evolves step by step. “It is a very spontaneous development. My artistic work is still a real pleasure. I don’t want to worry too much, I want to enjoy myself. I like setting myself little challenges.”
One of Sarah Robin’s most recent challenges was the collaborative project with book binder Fanette Chavent, whose studio is under the same roof: a kind of architectural space made of paper, a schematic city somewhere between the flats EVOL creates on cardboard and electricity boxes and a visual game dictated by pixels. An unfolding space you can drift through endlessly, against a background of urban beats. “It is only a prototype. We really want to make a full-sized, floor to ceiling copy. The graphics I am developing now are more closely related to the link between architecture and the digital, the virtual. The real and the unreal. You have the nostalgia of paper – of the tactile – but there is also a reference to the virtual, the digital, the computer. I like that contrast. I also enjoy working with pixels. Of course that is part of the current zeitgeist infiltrating my work, but I have always found the visualisation of pixels very aesthetic.”
The flexibility and fluidity of her designs for Conni Kaminski, the exploration of the image’s space on paper... these are things Sarah Robin never would have dared in the past. “They are things you discover while working, via encounters and collaborative projects. They make something new flourish. When Cédric Castus of the band V.O. saw the book, he was quite enthusiastic about it, and immediately saw it as a booklet he could use for his second solo album. If it would work out, that would be a great surprise! Fanette and I made a prototype in two colours. But it would be great to able to get more colours in it, more complexity.”
Colour is very important to Sarah Robin. And that is evident not only from her work. Her studio in Sint-Gillis/Saint-Gilles, on the ground floor of a house she is sharing with a number of other artists since June, is an immaculate white space with tables made of doors and a shelf against the wall with an enormous number of paint pots in every possible colour. The space looks out across the street from a large window. Or is it the other way around? During our conversation, various people stopped to look in. “That happens all the time. (Laughs) The entire neighbourhood stops here. I leave the door open in the summer. People sometimes come in to ask if I sell anything. Yes, yes, welcome to the colour department! (Laughs) Oh well, colour just creates cheerfulness! I have only just moved in, but there is already an enormous energy in this place!”
Borough: Sint-Gillis/Saint-Gilles
Current group exhibition: > 6/1, Centre de la Gravure et de l’Image Imprimée, La Louvière, www.centredelagravure.be
Fashion: Winter collection Conni Kaminski, Brussel/Bruxelles, www.connikaminski.com
Info: www.sarahrobin.be
Photos © Heleen Rodiers
Current group exhibition: > 6/1, Centre de la Gravure et de l’Image Imprimée, La Louvière, www.centredelagravure.be
Fashion: Winter collection Conni Kaminski, Brussel/Bruxelles, www.connikaminski.com
Info: www.sarahrobin.be
Photos © Heleen Rodiers
Read more about: Expo
Fijn dat je wil reageren. Wie reageert, gaat akkoord met onze huisregels. Hoe reageren via Disqus? Een woordje uitleg.