Born in Heerlen, the Netherlands in 1976, artist and pianist Robert Lambermont
draws his inspiration from poetry, movement and anything technical. His
kinetic installations are born of a persistently searching mind probing the
laws of the universe through shape, matter and dynamics. Impressions,
experiences, memories: all may be starting points for his oeuvre. He collects
them and transforms them into poetic, rhythmic sculptures which he exposes to
magnetic fields and chemical processes.
As a boy, Robert was already fond of dismantling electric mixers, radios,
sewing machines and pinball machines. He did it for the sheer astonishment.
How does something work? How does it fit together? That sense of amazement has
stayed with him. Then, at 15, he first saw the work of the Heerlen artist
Michel Huisman and realized the poetry of mechanics. Since then, he has been
driven by a search to portray technology, movement, poetry and nostalgic
memories. Flywheel mechanics, circuits, coils and electric motors have formed
a significant part of his sculptures.
The spark of his imagination can be traced to everyday reality. Sometimes it
is a city in motion that inspires him. In his skeletal installation (item 7,
1999, untitled), Robert Lambermont depicts the growth of the Italian city of
Perugia across the centuries, creaking and cracking on its glued Plexiglas
base. Sometimes a slow, imperceptible movement fascinates him: the passing of
the seasons, the alternation of night and day. But a chemical reaction or a
memory may fire his imagination tremendously, too. Thus, in 2005, the memory
of a building prompted him to create a fragile glazed picture of that name, in
which a mildew-green fluid flows bubbling along into nothing. The capillary
glass tubing of laboratory glassware alludes to the architecture of antiquity,
to aquaducts and elegant cornices. His technical experiment here serves a
purely poetic purpose. His birthplace, Heerlen, is another source of
inspiration. In Remembering Heerlen (2006), the artist gives free rein to his
nostalgic feelings. The view from his parents' house elicits his multiplex
blades which, powered by an electric motor, wave gently in the breeze. The
movement goes on and on. That element of recollection plays a key role in his
work. It links his sculptures to the music of Simeon ten Holt. The composer
from Bergen-op-Zoom builds his pieces on a large number of groups of bars
which have to be repeated – the pianist decides how often, and for how long.
Since leaving Rietveld Academy, Robert has held concerts of piano music by ten
Holt as an explanation of his own sculptures and installations. He has
actually formed his own ensemble, specializing in ten Holt's music. At the
unveiling of his exhibition at DSM, Robert will be playing Soloduiveldans 3
and 4.
Robert Lambermont studied at the Maastricht Fine Arts Academy and at
Amsterdam's Rietveld Academy. He now lives and works in Haarlem. His work
features in the collections of the Het Domein Museum in Sittard, at Jo and
Marlies Eyck's Hedge House in Wijlre, and at Roermond Arts Center.
