We are proud to announce our exhibition NOW Part 2 by Andrei Roiter at AKINCI. This exhibition will run parallel to NOW Part 1 at the Museum Helmond until April 6, 2023.
The title NOW hints at a paradox that mutually form the basisof both exhibitions. There is the ‘now’ of current events thatoccupy our minds, but there is also a more universal andtimeless now as it exists in art and in enduring ideas.
In his new body of paintings Roiter reflects on a fragile world. The artist meditates on the general mood and atmosphere, as well as on his own vision of our current time through visual metaphors that resonate with ambivalence. Throughout his oeuvre Roiter has established a personal
‘iconography’ in order to elicit deep layers of meaning.
Roiter’s painting ‘Beacon’, which shows a floating reproduction of a green forest, is about our problematic relationship to nature in general and ‘artificial’ cultivated nature in particular. Green reappears in a number of paintings in this show, which upon first thought is in keeping with Roiter’s long relationship to this colour. His initial relationship to green started more than three decades ago back in Moscow where a cheap olive green was very present in every institutional building, hospital, construction site and school.
Another work titled ‘Castle’ points to fragility and entropy. Dichotomies between interior and exterior as well as natural geology and human construction are brought together in this work. It also points to the human struggle between the forces
of nature and humanity’s attempt to control it. The ‘Castle’ is
possibly crumbling which hints at the collapse of questionable
concepts and empires that we once considered as stable.
A reflection upon the act of observation itself is addressed in a few works. The ‘Observatory’ painting and the ‘Illuminator’ series allude to the endless human desire to look in or to look out, as voyeurs, as seekers, and as explorers.
Boarded-up windows and punctured walls, common sights in our world today, remind us of a pervasive sense of isolation and abandonment created by dramatic current events. Such cataclysms have a way of affecting our perceptions, changing our relationship to our environments and to each other. For Roiter these affects manifest
in a renewed and increased appreciation for the familiar. The unusual luminosity and bright colors in some of his new paintings reflect this. Nevertheless, deep shadows of drama and doubt are still present throughout his pieces, which is consistent with Roiter’s tendency to present a delicate balance between the opposing forces of hope and
fear.