La Poste Pneumatique de Paris Robert Janitz

Robert Janitz (b.1962, DE) presents his first solo exhibition, La Poste Pneumatique de Paris, at Ruttkowski;68 in Paris.

The show features two distinct groups of works that form the core of his artistic creation. In his practice, the artist has engaged in and experimented with cypher-like line structures for over ten years: developing into architectural elements, letter-like structures somewhere between abstraction and figuration. Wiping gestures, as in window or blackboard cleaning, elevate the invisible to the motif, reversing the claim to what painting is or has to be, using its negation for an own interpretation.

These elements are also taken up by the second series of work. Here, the same gestures, tools, and utensils give rise to more crystalline grid structures – forms and motifs that stand apart from the first group of works yet are related to them like siblings. Back-headed figures emerge from compressed, squashed lines that have emancipated themselves in their depiction, allowing motifs to drift and vary.

Compression and expansion of pneumatic movements, that represent two differing ways of the evolving lines, its density, intensity, and gradual emptying of brushstrokes frame the show. The origin of these developments points to a primordial form of painting, to its immanent mystery, that can never be fully depicted.

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