Showtime

Andy Roberts Showtime from 2022 is a vibrant mixed-media painting that deploys the immediacy and energy of contemporary abstraction while referencing the performative dimension of artistic creation suggested by the works title. Robert, born in Belize and based in New York, creates paintings that layer gestural marks, flat color fields, and found textures into compositions that suggest both the improvisatory freedom of jazz and the structural discipline of architectural design. In Showtime, the mixed-media approach allows for a rich surface patina: paint sits alongside collaged elements and raw canvas, creating a tactile depth that resists the smooth uniformity of much digital-era abstraction. The title invokes the moment of performance, that instant when preparation transforms into presentation, and the paintings visual energy lives up to that promise with dynamic diagonals, bold color contrasts, and a surface that appears simultaneously spontaneous and carefully orchestrated. Robert has described his practice as rooted in the lived experience of the Caribbean diaspora, where cultural memory and contemporary urban reality intersect, and the paintings layered surfaces can be read as material analogues of that intersection.

Andy Robert represents a generation of Caribbean-born abstract painters expanding the narrative of abstraction beyond its Euro-American canon. His work has been exhibited at major institutions including the Whitney Museum and belongs to the broader movement of Black abstraction that is reshaping how we understand both the history and the future of non-representational painting.

A dynamic mixed-media painting by Andy Robert that channels the energy of performance through layered abstraction, representing the Caribbean diaspora perspective in contemporary abstract painting.