Amsterdam, 25 March 2013
YURI RODEKIN - ‘LES RENDEZ-VOUS EXTRAORDINAIRES AVEC LES OMBRES’
April 13 – May 18, 2013
Opening: April 13, 5 p.m. – 7 p.m.
Ornis A. Gallery is proud to present ‘Les
rendez-vous extraordinaires avec les
ombres’, a new series of figurative
paintings by the Russian artist
Yuri Rodekin (1960). Rodekin’s paintings,
that reveal the artist’s broad knowledge of
art history, literature and philosophy,
balance on the thin line between realism
and expressionism.
The exhibition title ‘Les rendez-vous
extraordinaires avec les ombres’ (‘the
extraordinary meetings with the shadows’)
refers to Rodekin’s work method. Every
painting is the result of an encounter with
something remarkable, either an actual
meeting or an experienced sensation or a
memory. In the words of Rodekin: “the
shadow, as antonym of the light, is the
beginning of everything you see”. This dark
side is deeply expressed in his paintings.
In Rodekin’s settings it always seems to be
night. The sky is coloured in a dark blue shade and expressive purple clouds mysteriously float
above the portrayed characters. The moon colours their faces green. We are invited into a gloomy
and mysterious world.
Many of the painted characters are situated classically in front of a window or in a mountain
landscape. While there is a lack of human interaction, Rodekin’s solitary characters are
accompanied by snakes, birds or butterflies, as an elegant and light counterbalance to the sinister
setting. With this combination of realism and melancholia, his paintings strikingly resemble the
aesthetic of the mid-twentieth century, found in the works of Giorgio DeChirico, the artists of the
Neue Sachlichkeit in Germany (Otto Dix and George Grosz) or the Dutch Magisch Realisten
(Carel Willink). However, contemporaneity is never too far away. Like an inventor in a
science-fiction movie, Rodekin builds his characters out of several elements. For instance the
young man in ‘Young Entomologists Society’ (2012) who wears a colourful Mohawk hairstyle. The
hands of the female character of ‘Playing Lucretzia’ (2012), a reference to the art historical visual
tradition of Roman martyr Lucretia, are covered by plastic gloves. Rodekin paints characters that
stand with one foot in the early twentieth century while their other foot stands firmly in the
twenty-first.
Hazenstraat 11 | 1016 SM Amsterdam | the Netherlands | +31 6 49 812 676 | [email protected] | www.ornisagallery.com
ORNIS A. GALLERY
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For more information and press quality images, please contact Ornis Althuis at info@ornisagallery.
com or by phone: +31 6 498 12 676
Image may be used with the following caption:
[Yuri Rodekin - The rules of writing a poem, 2012, 58x46cm, oil on canvas)
Courtesy Ornis A. Gallery
Hazenstraat 11 | 1016 SM Amsterdam | the Netherlands | +31 6 49 812 676 | [email protected] | www.ornisagallery.com
ORNIS A. GALLERY
Ornis A. Gallery
Hazenstraat 11
1016 SM Amsterdam
www.ornisagallery.com