Charlie Roberts | Freedom World Tour

Galleri Magnus Karlsson is pleased to introduce Charlie Roberts’ first exhibition in Sweden. Charlie Roberts was born in Hutchinson, Kansas in 1983 but is now settled outside of Oslo, Norway.

The exhibition ”Freedom World Tour” shows off Roberts’ broad repertoire paintings, sculptures and film and is in many ways autobiographical. Freedom, the artist’s band, will perfom live during the opening night, and a music video made by Roberts is part of the exhibition. A series of fifty drawings make up a storyboard to a film that will be shoot during the band’s upcoming US tour.

Charlie Roberts creates obsessively detailed paintings and objects, each of which is its own universe. Paintings on paper and broken blocks of wood, wood constructions and rough-hewn pieces of wood. All made in a dextrous technique with inimitable energy. His paintings are filled with portraits of family and friends, musicians, sports figures, birds, animals, corporate logos, book covers, and accurately rendered paintings from art history, all arranged in off-kilter grids, swirling compositions of concentric circles, or imaginary architecture. Says Roberts, ”I am a ’maximalist’ at heart and love to pack things to the gills. But this exhibition feels like something new to me. Form and substance are getting equal billing”.

In a new painting, ”Green Zone”, the flow of power is represented with the US in control of the aquaducts. Roberts’ appoach to his old home country is mixed. ”When I lived there it was easier to be critical, but being away for a time I can see more clearly what an extraordinary psychic force it puts out over the world, frightful, and amazing. There has been no place in history like it and even for all its missteps, I love my country ”, he says. In some sculptures, shaped as sticks and shields carved in wood and painted,a darker and more aggressive side of Roberts is shown.