Robert Zehnder conjures surreal, expansive landscapes that operate both as emotional terrain and psychological cartographies. Rejecting inhabited spaces, he constructs top-down views: layered vignettes that interlock and drift, creating environments that feel familiar yet uncanny. His richly textured canvases begin with a drawing phase—acting as map‑making—where pathways and geographic nodes unfold top-down. From there he applies layers of oil, allowing colors to communicate mood and motion. The resulting scenes hover between topographical detail and mooded abstraction, often suggesting ruptures, false bottoms, and precarious vistas. Influenced by American Regionalism and surrealism, Zehnder synthesizes pastoral ambiances with disquieting emptiness. His landscapes echo the anxiety and instability of contemporary life—fields that seem to move, maps that might slip out from under you, terrain in flux. Zehnder is attentive to the slippage between constructed and imagined space: his worlds feel both designed and dreamlike. His work invites viewers to wander uncertain terrain—spaces that reflect myth, solitude, anxiety, and renewal. It is this sense of narrative dissolved into visual form that defines his compelling visual practice, where meaning is never fixed, but always in flux. ...
