Rouy’s approach to the body and his overall pursuit of painting is one of contradiction, harmony, and perpetual transformation, criss-crossing gender, form, and disposition. His work is a fever dream of amorphous and fluid embodiments depicting rhapsodic portraits of 21st century desire that is continuously refilled with physical dissonance, mystery and secrecy, ecstasy and turmoil.
Each work is liberated from established ways of being and becoming which examine the essence and meaning of encounters, drawing equally from the here-and-now, the internet and the machine, as well as more primordial expression and classical demands of color and form. The human figure has always preoccupied artists; its story dominates the history of art. In its imagination and in its image-making, we find clues as to how artists have engaged with the political and socio-cultural conditions and sentiments of their moment. Now we are in a time of renewed and committed interests in figurative painting, Rouy uses the figure as a multi-sided prism to examine and interrogate the contemporary crucibles of gender, fiction and technology.
Maelstrom will be on view throughout February 14, 2020 at Peres Projects Karl-Marx-Alle 82, Berlin, Germany. photographs courtesy of the gallery