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The lenticulars here are similar to his installations which use mirrors and projectors, as both are able to dynamically reflect light. It may be said that Rozendaal’s characteristic motives – specific colors, the contrast of light and dark, various patterns, movements and types of interaction – which he was once able to draw only on light-emitting displays, have taken a step further towards material painting. However, the illusion formed by light reflecting off the surface of a lenticular is different than the illusion seen in trompe l’oeil or op art since it does not rely on the limit of human eyesight. It is rather the medium – the lenticular sheet itself – that which has the property of freeing the colors dwelling in the rays of light, making them visible to the human eye.
The lenticular paintings leave us unable to catch the true essence of the image which changes depending on the viewer’s perspective. At the same time, due to their changing quality, these images always keep their freshness, and it can be said that they reflect the outward scenery which keeps changing at an accelerating pace. Rozendaal’s works – in which there is no attachment towards things that have shape, but rather show complete freedom and playfulness – seem to inspire hope for that what we call “painting.”

(solo exhibition “Somewhere” 2016 TSCA)

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by the COVID-19 pandemic. “Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness” is the title of a mid-length novel written by a Japanese novelist, Kenzaburo Oe (1935-2023) in 1969. The novel was themed on the despair and libration of human beings surviving the nuclear age. The words were taken from a line in a poem by Wystan H.Auden (1907-1973), who is considered by many to be the greatest poet of the 20th century and was an influence on Oe. Auden was born in England but immigrated to the United States, where he wrote many poems about coping with a corrupt society and helping individuals who suffered.

The title of this edition clearly refers to “Madama Butterfly”, Puccini’s opera set in Nagasaki. Keeping this in mind, the two characters depicted in these black and white photographs can be seen as representations of Ms. Butterfly and Mr. Pinkerton, whose tragic love story is somehow summarized in the incompleteness of the two arcs of a circle placed next to each other – two gigantic fans, an echo to Japanese culture.

But the work is of course more than a matter of illustration. The play with the names (“Flutterby and Kinperton”) indicates a sense of strangeness and hybridization that is embodied by the mythological figures: a mix of god/goddess, human, and animal, augmented with technological attributes. Here, bodies, cultures and temporalities collide in a delicate, almost silent way.

Taken in the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris when its famous Ferris wheel had just been disassembled, the photographs are also an ironical take on the notion of “public art,” which hints at the Keijiban’s own context. With its classical statues on their pedestal, disturbed and enhanced at the same time by their environment – and more specifically by a symbol of a funfair –, Flutterby and Kinperton manifests the interconnection of high culture and low culture, as well as the power of photography to step on other artistic disciplines.

Evan Nesbit

https://evannesbit.com/

Evan Nesbit

https://evannesbit.com/

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