Arsen Roje
14 Feb - 21 Mar 2009
ARSEN ROJE
"Body Parts"
February 14th – March 21st 2009
Opening reception: Saturday, 6 – 9 pm
"The situation is that of him who is helpless, cannot act, in the event cannot paint, since he is obliged to paint. The act is of him who, helpless, unable to act, acts, in the event paints, since he is obliged to paint."
-Samuel Beckett, "Three Dialogues" (1949)
Javier Peres is pleased to announce "BODY PARTS," an exhibition of paintings by Arsen Roje at the gallery's Culver City, Los Angeles location. Arsen Roje was born in Croatia in 1937. He briefly attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb before moving to Paris in 1965. In 1968 Roje moved to New York before finally settling in Los Angeles in 1971, where he lived until his death in 2007.
Roje painted tirelessly in various degrees of success and isolation, grappling with the push-pull of abstraction and representation, but always coming back to the figure and ultimately his own body. In his later work, presented here, he identified with the reductionism of Samuel Beckett, who remained his chief intellectual influence throughout his life.
A forerunner of his later work, the now-famous poster image for the 1970 film M*A*S*H shows Roje's own hand flashing a peace sign while wearing an army helmet and standing on high-heeled legs. In essence, this iconic American image creates an anthropomorphic figure from human parts –a prosthetic mash-up of the body acting as signifier.
Painted in the artist's final years, each of the canvases on view reflects the peculiar brand of representation that so obsessed Roje: inward, indexical, without context, without distance. Roje's lush, sculptural renderings of the human form pop out from the surface towards the viewer while the backgrounds remain uniform, deploying the sheen and saturation of marine lacquer, house and auto paint. This laid-bare combination of flatness/negation and the imperative of the figure offers Roje his ultimate resolve.
"BODY PARTS" will be on view at Peres Projects (2766 S. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90034) through March 21, 2009. Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, from 11:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. and by appointment. For further information or reproductions please contact Sarah Walzer at tel: +1 310 559 6100 or sarah@peresprojects.com
"Body Parts"
February 14th – March 21st 2009
Opening reception: Saturday, 6 – 9 pm
"The situation is that of him who is helpless, cannot act, in the event cannot paint, since he is obliged to paint. The act is of him who, helpless, unable to act, acts, in the event paints, since he is obliged to paint."
-Samuel Beckett, "Three Dialogues" (1949)
Javier Peres is pleased to announce "BODY PARTS," an exhibition of paintings by Arsen Roje at the gallery's Culver City, Los Angeles location. Arsen Roje was born in Croatia in 1937. He briefly attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb before moving to Paris in 1965. In 1968 Roje moved to New York before finally settling in Los Angeles in 1971, where he lived until his death in 2007.
Roje painted tirelessly in various degrees of success and isolation, grappling with the push-pull of abstraction and representation, but always coming back to the figure and ultimately his own body. In his later work, presented here, he identified with the reductionism of Samuel Beckett, who remained his chief intellectual influence throughout his life.
A forerunner of his later work, the now-famous poster image for the 1970 film M*A*S*H shows Roje's own hand flashing a peace sign while wearing an army helmet and standing on high-heeled legs. In essence, this iconic American image creates an anthropomorphic figure from human parts –a prosthetic mash-up of the body acting as signifier.
Painted in the artist's final years, each of the canvases on view reflects the peculiar brand of representation that so obsessed Roje: inward, indexical, without context, without distance. Roje's lush, sculptural renderings of the human form pop out from the surface towards the viewer while the backgrounds remain uniform, deploying the sheen and saturation of marine lacquer, house and auto paint. This laid-bare combination of flatness/negation and the imperative of the figure offers Roje his ultimate resolve.
"BODY PARTS" will be on view at Peres Projects (2766 S. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90034) through March 21, 2009. Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, from 11:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. and by appointment. For further information or reproductions please contact Sarah Walzer at tel: +1 310 559 6100 or sarah@peresprojects.com