The abstraction of everyday subjects and scenes runs like a thread through Rafaël Rozendaal’s (1980) oeuvre and is reminiscent of early video games, leaving the viewer with a sense of suggested movement, as if the depicted places are waiting for something to happen in them. An invitation for one’s imagination to get engaged to the artwork. An invitation to escape a current state of being and explore a new one.
Rozendaal gained recognition by using the internet as his canvas, but for his latest series of works, he turned his attention to the traditional canvas. Despite the new medium, his signature style is unmistakable, and his visual language is rooted in the digital world. The paintings explore the tension between abstraction and figuration, something he calls “minimal figuration”. For example, how few lines are needed to depict a landscape or a glass of water, with a sense of suggested possibility?