Alex Roberts

Lives and works in Berlin, Germany

Artist statement

Alex Roberts is an artist that lives and works between Berlin and the UK. She works with paint and translucence, addressing paintings’ surface, layers and spatial depth, via the play of colour and immediacy of marks. Testing the sliding scales of figuration and abstraction, her focus is how we perceive identity, change, and encounters. Alex’s interests in exploring the spectacle and non-reveal of identity, often by capturing moments in the lives of others, invites the viewer to question their own perceptions, observations and recollected encounters. Reviewing the expansive aspects of body language, hints of narrative, performativity and embodiment that equate with painting. Charged by these series of studio relationships frequently the candid paintings’, sensitive installations implicate or stage the viewer as protagonist. Currently, often working with female subjects (via varying surfaces and scale) the work probes and exposes the un-fixedness of witnessed, projected and speculated portraits and empathetic gestures. Exploring painted unease between what is public and what is private: how, in today’s digital world, appearance often contrasts with reality and sociability belies intimacy.

Artwork