The Baltic's Comprehensive Exhibition of Works by Robert Breer ~ As A Tribute To His Life

Written by Germaine Tompkins Tuesday, 21 February 2012 22:27

Gateshead, UK.- The Baltic Centre is currently showing "Robert Breer" in its Level 3 and Level 4 Galleries. This major exhibition of American artist Robert Breer brings together his paintings, ground-breaking films and radical sculptures from the last 60 years. Considered one of the most influential animator/film-makers in history, this is the artist’s most comprehensive exhibition to date. Sadly, Robert Breer died on Saturday August 13th at the age of 85, and did not live to see this exhibition close. "Robert Breer" remains on view at the Baltic, and then travels to the Tinguely Museum in Basel where it will be on display from October 26th through January 29th 2012.

Breer's first real passion in art was the reductive purity of Piet Mondrian’s grid-based abstract paintings. Moving to Paris in 1949, Breer developed his own take on hard edge abstraction, exhibiting at the Galerie Denise René. He soon rejected the stability and harmony of Mondrian’s compositions, introducing implied movement and free-floating lines into his paintings. His forms became irregular and wrestled against each other, appearing in a permanent state of unrest. Around ten canvases from the 1950s, including "Composition with Three Lines", 1950, "Time Out", 1953 and "Three Stages Elevators", 1955 will be included. Many have not been exhibited for several decades. Developing the implied movement of his paintings Breer also started experimenting with animation, first with flip books and then with film. In his first film, "Form Phases", 1952, the designs of his paintings were set into motion, morphing from one thing into another and shifting in colour and cinematic space. "Form Phases IV", 1954, a tour de force of movement and instability sees forms, colors, lines and actions burst, complement and contradict each other across every square inch of screen. A tension between the moving and still image defines many of these early works: "Recreation I", 1956-57 uses a different image for every single frame (24 frames per second), rejecting the supposed reality that traditional film represents and revealing movement as nothing but a repetition of static film cells.

As his career progressed Breer became ever-concerned with the interplay between abstraction and representation. "Fuji", 1974 jumps from filmed footage of Breer’s wife by a train window to a rotoscoped sequence of a ticket collector and countless drawn depictions of Mount Fuji, all of which slip back and forth into and out of abstraction. In "Swiss Army Knife with Rats and Pigeons", 1980 the functional form of the knife and its red colour separate and dance around each other before reuniting. The exhibition includes these and other pioneering works from 1952 into the 1990s. BALTIC’s Level 4 gallery will be devoted to another important body of Breer’s work, the motion sculptures or ‘floats’, begun in the 1960s. These simple, almost minimalist forms, move at speed that is almost imperceptible before changing direction upon a collision. Recreating the motion and flux of his films in three dimensions, works such as "Zig", 1965, "Column", 1967 and "Sponge", 2000 surround the viewer, allowing form and change to be experienced in real time and space. Breer’s greatest achievement, perhaps, has been to use one force to define its opposite – movement to counteract movement, pause to dramatise speed, and representation to concentrate abstraction. Organised in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition will be the first to bring Breer’s work in all media together for several decades, revealing him to be as vital a today as he was in the 1950s.


Housed in a landmark industrial building on the south bank of the River Tyne in Gateshead, UK, the Baltic Centre is a major international centre for contemporary art. The Baltic itself has no permanent collection, providing instead an ever-changing calendar of exhibitions and events that give a unique and compelling insight into contemporary artistic practice. Baltic’s dynamic, diverse and international program ranges from blockbuster exhibitions to innovative new work and projects created by artists working within the local community. The Baltic was founded with funding from The National Lottery through Arts Council England, Gateshead Council, Northern Rock Foundation, the European Regional Development Fund and One NorthEast, and receives continued support from Arts Council England and Gateshead Council. The notion of Baltic began in 1991 when Northern Arts (now Arts Council England North East) announced its ambition to achieve ‘major new capital facilities for the Contemporary Visual Arts in Central Tyneside’. The Baltic Flour Mill was closed in 1981. Dominic Williams of Ellis Williams Architects won an architectural competition in the mid-1990s to convert the old mill building into a centre for art. Construction began in 1998, and only the south and north facades of the original 1950s building were retained. A new structure consisting of six main floors and three mezzanines was secured between the facades which contain 3, 000 square meters of arts space (four galleries and a flexible performance space), artists' studios, cinema/lecture space, shop, a library and archive for the study of contemporary art and the Rooftop Restaurant on Level 6 (providing stunning views over the River Tyne). An additional two-story structure: The Riverside Building, was constructed to the west of the main building, providing the main entrance into BALTIC, which looks out across Baltic Square and the Gateshead Millennium Bridge. After ten years in the planning and a capital investment of £50m, BALTIC opened to the public at midnight on Saturday 13 July 2002. The inaugural exhibition, ‘B.OPEN’, featured work by Chris Burden, Carsten Holler, Julian Opie, Jaume Plensa and Jane & Louise Wilson, and attracted over 45,000 visitors in the first week. Since then the Baltic has presented over 40 exhibitions and welcomed more than 3 million visitors. As well as contemporary art exhibitions, the Baltic also offers a range of spaces for hire, and can accommodate a wide range of events, from meetings and workshops to banquets and conferences. Since opening in July 2002 the Baltic has hosted a range of high profile events including The Channel 4 Stirling Prize 2002, Audi Young Designer of the Year Competition Final 2002-2005, University of Northumbria final year fashion show 2003, BBC Question Time and Prime Minister’s Newsnight. Even though BALTIC opened to the public in July 2002, the first exhibition which was seen on the site of the building was “Tarantantara” by Anish Kapoor in 1999. “Tarantantara” formed part of ‘B4B’, the Baltic’s pre-opening series of exhibitions and events. A site-specific installation by Anish Kapoor, “Tarantanrara” was commissioned specially for the site before the construction of the new building began. Over 50m long and 25m wide, the work filled the shell of the Baltic Flour Mills and was in-situ for eight weeks and seen by over 16,000 people. In 2011 the Baltic is to be the venue for the Turner Prize, this would be the first time the event has been held outside of a London or Liverpool Tate in its 25 years, a major exhibition from 21 October 2011 to 8 January 2012 will coincide with the final stages of the competition and the winning artist will be announced at a celebratory event at BALTIC in December 2011. Visit the Baltic’s website at … http://www.balticmill.com

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