We are looking forward to the new gallery season and proudly announce an exhibition of new paintings by Rob Birza (1962). Over a period of thirty years Birza, with his non-conformist attitude and exceptional talent, has succeeded in shaking up and overthrowing dominant assumptions about composition, color, concept, narrative, design and both good and bad taste. It earned him the reputation as one of the most important artists of his generation.

Through informed interventions he succeeds time and time again in evoking a visual world – whether abstract or figurative – which could be anything: mysterious, elusive, boundless, hard, soft, seductive, disruptive. Each image stands on its own and offers viewers an opening/ a doorway into a world in which you can wander, get lost and be caught off balance, but in which, above all, everything is possible and nothing is filtered out. What does painting have to offer, if not such abundance and magnanimity? Birza’s urge to create images in which the ornamental and the decadent is in the service of painting is essential to him – a continuous thread running through his entire oeuvre.

In the new series of paintings, Floating Circles, the reservoir of images, which is centered on an ancient basic form, is stretched even further and set in motion. The loose touch used to set up these paintings has a direct impact. Due to an apparent absence of gravitational pull, the system seems to be all over the place and about to implode. Circles have rarely been so free. You may think that you are familiar with the form but at the same time you are looking at a painting in which everything seems strange. And because of the loose touch, the colors appear to be in search of greater expressive freedom than they had before. The different shades of color are evidence of a decadent sensitivity; they represent a world that is about to fall apart, but that still holds the possibility of a new order or constellation, albeit in a distant future.

Nederlandse uitnodiging