Robert Janitz
Rhythmische Klangformen: Eine Studie, 2014, Oil, wax, flour on linen, 137 × 106 cm
Robert Janitz is a German artist born in Alsfeld, Hesse in Germany in 1962. He lived and worked in France; first as a lecturer at the University of Paris and, later, in 2009, he taught at the École Superieurer Beux Arts in Cherboug. Soon after, he moved to New York where he currently lives and works. He studied Sanskrit, Art History, and Comparative Religions at the University of Marburg, Hesse and received a Master of Arts in Sanskrit. He has also studied paper making under the direction of artist Katharina Eitel in Marburg from 1991 to 1992. Janitz has been a part of several international exhibitions including the Meyer Riegger Berlin (2014), Galerie Sobering in Paris (2103), École d’Art Gerard Jacot in Belfort (2012), Centre d’Art Domaine de Kerguehennec in Bignan (2011) and many others. He is represented by Team Gallery in the United States and Meyer Rigger Gallery in Europe
Blackmar-Diemer-Gambit, 2015, Oil, wax, flour on linen, 63,5 x 50,8 cm
Paris s'allume, 2014, Oil, wax, flour on linen, 137 × 106 cm
Days of Hand, 2014, Oil, wax, flour on linen, 195.6 × 152.4 cm
Janitz is recognized for his abstract, semi-abstract, and conceptual work. His works involve using oils with gesso, eggs, wax and flour and he is notorious for using brushes from hardware stores. He compares his painting process to that of buttering bread or washing a window, attaching a utilitarian aspect to his work. Themes surrounding his work include memory, sensuality, movement, transparency, and invisibility. His thick brushstrokes evoke a corporeality, but rather than eroticizing this palpability, Janitz, instead, emphasizes the movements and transparency to the extent where the paint becomes the focus of the painting itself as a figure of the abstract. The layers of paint and play between revealing and hiding create a concrete transcendental object. The simplicity of the work, in fact, gives rise to complicated notions where thesis and antithesis collide into a multiplex synthesis. Janitz’s work offers us an engaging narrative that relies on form and function through a dialectic relationship.
Text by Perwana Nazif
Courtesy of the Artist
Robert Janitz
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