The Art of Unending Discovery: Interivew with Artist Robin Treier

THE RICE SOCIETY What is your story? What motivated you to become an artist?

ROBIN TREIER From a young age, I was always drawn to expressing myself through drawing, painting, and building things with toys. I had a constant urge to share the things that brought me joy or fascinated me. Whenever I knew relatives were coming over, I would prepare a lot of things—books, drawings, items I found in nature—to show them and talk about. I might have been a bit overwhelming for some, I guess.
Later on I decided to graduate as a graphics designer. I thought it was a job but still close to art. Of course I learned it is a different practice mostly because of the goal of solving a problem, while it still uses a lot or principles or aesthetics we developed in the lab that is art.
Ultimately, I was always drawn back to my desire to create freely, even after experiencing creative burnout following a tragic event in my late 20s. I went back to school to study media theory because I was curious. However, during my second semester, I began creating art again, which I later exhibited. I realized that I was simply too afraid to do what I truly needed and wanted to do.
In the end nothing ever gave me that special feeling like the exploring during an art project, following what sparks my interest, with trying to go where there is a little bit of fear and showing it to people.  

TRS What inspires you the most?

RT Hm, that changes a lot. I've come to believe that everything is fascinating in some way if you look at it closely enough. We are literally surrounded by marvels, and I love that. So maybe it’s the unfathomable complexity of everything that inspires me.
One topic that has consistently been a source of inspiration and curiosity for me is media and media theory. Media are such interesting, ghostly things. I love to mix them together and do odd things with them, and even to have headaches trying to understand them. They can be like magic sometimes, and we are surrounded by them—technological media as well as natural ones. Even if I live to be 100 years old, I won’t be done exploring my curiosity about them, and I’ll likely still barely understand them. There’s just so much going on, physically, psychologically, philosophically. This might be why I’m still so bad at explaining, in short, what fascinates me about them.
The science around media has also been, and still is, a refuge for me.The science around media also was and still is a refuge for me. I sometimes take a lot of time, research and "soul-searching" to come to a new finished art project.

But I am still that kid who wants to share the things that amaze me. That itself can be a creative endeavor—from how you tell it to editing videos and so forth. Even when I struggle or feel lost in my art, I still find happiness in that playful creativity.

TRS What project or series is special to you and why?

RT In 2012, for the first time since my burnout, someone encouraged me to do art again. That person was Jens Kenserski of the agency Pulsmacher. He had a long-running art series where they invited one artist every year and provided resources to help create an art piece. I initially refused because I was afraid that what really interested me would be "too ugly or even stupid" to show—I was afraid.
But they encouraged me greatly.

It is called "Walt & me" and consists of a 3,00 by 1,60 m canvas, a video and a 100 polaroids that became an edition. During a month and a half of painting I took one every time when I felt afraid or like I couldn't finish it. From the start I told them that in the end I'll deliver a painting that is covered all white again just with a little Polaroid. So I spent time painting this portrait of Walt Whitman a poet I love. And even though it was a painting it was as fleeting as a dance or a song - usually my art always felt that way to me after some moments of joy and pride it vanishes I begin to see mistakes, I doubt. I wanted to find out if I can get around that or st least illustrate how I feel. And I wanted to know how it'll feel to let go of it shortly before I painted it white.

I can never experience that again. It was a very, very interesting feeling. The project gave me the courage to be more honest in my art and bolder in my choices

TRS What was the funniest thing you discovered recently and shared with your community?

RT Oh, that’s hard to say. I share a lot. I think it was likely something by the creative monster Pablo Rochat or Eric Andre (that show is a creative tornado with a new, unexpected idea every few seconds) or maybe a LOTR meme. There was one about Gandalf telling the hobbits not to touch the Palantír, paired with a video of a gymnast performing with a ball, labeled "Pippin."

TRS How do you believe artists can contribute to promoting more sustainable art practices?

RT I’m a firm believer that, in the bigger picture, art and science are both laboratories and innovators of society—each in their own unique way.
Art and science can greatly influence and encourage each other, and they often do in many collaborations. For example, there is an art residency even at CERN and many other fields of technology, where the exchange of different points of view on a topic is often included.
The tables at which we design our future need to be as diverse as possible because the more perspectives we have on a topic, the richer those tables become.
Art is a particularly free field where curiosity, odd or even "dumb" questions, and challenging perspectives or old approaches are not frowned upon—even when society may be annoyed by some forms of that. Groups—small and large—tend to gravitate toward established ideas out of fear of failure and a longing for clear answers. We don’t like ambiguity. Yet, creative innovative ideas bloom best in timeframes where one accepts ambiguity, chaos and the possibility of many answers being equally true or a mistake may be a win in different light.

Artists live in that place. It’s home to them. That may be helpful, I believe.

Furthermore, I’ve always liked that art can bring things into the world that have no pragmatic reason to exist. It can spark emotions that help us, but also create new questions, new connections in our brains, and hence new ideas—since our brain's architecture is a network of connected points. Sometimes it’s hard to find new connections within the realm of what’s practical and established. We need new connections and new ideas—a lot.