Galaxis Coincidentia 17 Painting

Rene the Rooze was born in Amsterdam 1955, but grew up in the beautiful albeit poor paradise of Dutch New Guinea. The jungle started 100 metres from his home and its colours, the heat, the indigenous people and the smells of the many tropical fruits and plants make up his earliest memories. Then, on a cold rainy day in 1961 he arrived with his family in Rotterdam after a boat journey of over six weeks. Shortly after their arrival his mother died of cancer. Both experience that made a mark on his life. Since, Rene de Rooze has travelled far and wide. Every travel was a search for a lost culture and lost colours and a one year stay in Jerusalem was part of that search. In recent years Rene has started to explore the influence of his past and tries to fit elements of these early memories into his attitude towards contemporary visual art in Western Europe. He attempts to make a fresh start and to discard unnecessary baggage by forgetting what he has learned at the Academy of Arts and after. What he learned was useful in wielding the modern visual language. However, Rene remained conscious of other elements from long ago and far away, that did not seem to fit in. By removing this excess baggage and letting go of concepts, these elements resurface. He returns to a primitivism that has always been present in its rudimentary form as an answer to the disillusion caused by the developments of western culture, politics and economy over the past 20 years. /as an answer to the sobering developments of western society over the past 20 years. Letting go of concepts may seem surprising in a contemporary art scene that puts such emphasis on developing concepts. Rene is aware of this and realises that he operated in two different worlds/in between worlds. He uses the power of coincidence as an instrument to create spontaneous, beautiful and supposedly unattractive works. His works have been exhibited in the Netherlands, Germany, France, Denmark, Belarus, Russia and Sweden and form part of several collections, including a publication in the Groninger Museum. Paintings are in the collection of the Marc Chagall Museum , Vitebsk, Belarus.