The Box Painting

This painting, like most of Robert’s current work, takes its primary inspiration from the field of theoretical physics, starkly contrasted with religious allegory and symbolism. ‘In a recent theoretical model, physicists discussed what would happen if you left an apple inside an unbreakable box for an infinite amount of time. The conclusion they drew was that the Apple would eventually decompose to a molecular level and then, according to the known laws of physics, reform in every single possible combination of the base elements with which it is comprised. This process over an infinite amount of time, would logically yield all possibilities of what else the Apple could become, until inevitably at some point, the Apple itself must exist again in its original form. On top of that thoroughly unsettling, if not mind-bending concept, this process logically must happen an infinite amount of times. In a universe that, according to modern physics, may well be infinite - this theoretical model might also be true for us. In the story of genesis, mankind looses its innocence after eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge. Just as in the world of science, often the more we learn, the more questions appear. All the while, the universe which we are a part of gets ever more complex, terrifying and unknowable. The true subject of this work, rather than the box or the apple suspended within it, is time, or more specifically, an infinite amount of time by which everything abides’.