Robyn Penn

‘Floating World’

28 March - 26 April

Experience Robyn Penn’s first solo exhibition with Artor Contemporary. Floating World explores the transient nature of time, memory, and perception. These works embrace the fluidity of experience, dissolving fixed moments into something elusive and dreamlike. Layers of wax both preserve and obscure, mirroring the way memory blurs and reshapes reality. Without clear horizons, the paintings evoke an inner space rather than a defined place, capturing the impermanence of life. Drawing on François Jullien’s idea of "painting the clouds to evoke the moon," this series reflects the beauty of the ungraspable—where time resists being anchored, and meaning exists in the in-between.

Robyn Penn, A world without time V, 2025

Oil encaustic on canvas

355mm x 485mm, Framed

$ 2,650.00 SOLD

The title of this collection of works is taken from the Japanese genre of print during the Edo period —‘Ukiyo-e’ meaning ‘pictures of the floating world’. The works hope to create a unique visual language that captures the interplay between time, memory, and nostalgia.

Drawing inspiration from François Jullien’s concept of “painting the clouds to evoke the moon”, I seek to ‘hold time’—to make visible a kind of ‘non-time’ that is both remembered and suspended in a dreamlike state. Distilling imagery to its essential elements is akin to painting a haiku, where simplicity carries depth. My paintings without horizons evoke an inner space rather than a specific place or moment, offering views of the world that reflect a state of mind rather than a direct representation. These images begin with an idea, a picture, yet in the process of making, they dissolve, becoming something more elusive. For me, the work is less about fixing a moment in time and more about expressing how the temporal world resists being anchored—how life, in its passing, remains fluid and ungraspable. I aim to articulate that which is provisional, impermanent, and difficult to pin down.

I submerge my paintings in a layer of wax, both preservin and obscuring them—much like memory itself, where clarity and distortion coexist. Our perception of the world is always blurred, shaped as much by what we see as by what fades from view. I am fascinated by how our minds actively construct time, not as a fixed sequence but as somethingfluid and shifting. There is no singular, coherent narrative; we are the ones turning. As Carlo Rovelli so beautifully expresses, “The world is not so much made of stones as of fleeting sounds or waves moving through the sea.” We understand the world in its becoming, not in its being. “Change is ubiquitous without being ordered by time.” -Robyn Penn