Artists

Roland Flexner

Press release

Galerie Nathalie Obadia is delighted to present in its Parisian space, Dessin, a solo exhibition dedicated to Roland Flexner, which also celebrates a more than twenty year collaboration with the artist. The exhibition consists of a group of twenty-one previously unseen works that take the visitor on a voyage through the realms of the artist's imagination.

Born in Nice, France, Roland Flexner lives and works in New York, where he has been based since 1982. For many years, the artist has been producing drawings that explore the interaction between chance and intention. This research began with his Bubble Drawings series in 1995, where the artist used a straw to project a mixture of Indian ink and soapy water onto sheets of paper. Following his residence at the Villa Kujoyama in the Kansai region of Japan, the artist continued his experiments using sumi ink diluted in water.

The artist's physical gestures are hugely important in these works. He manipulates the ink floating on the still fluid surface of the support, before blotting the paper in order to fix the imprint of the image. Once the paper is removed, the artist makes more adjustments. These techniques allow the artist to play on a variety of temporalities: the liquid captures the initial instant when the lines are created, which the artist then manipulates until the ink dries completely. The works are thus shaped into imaginary landscapes, traces and recordings of time itself.

This exhibition brings together two new series of images which, while distinct from the above-mentioned works, follow on from them in a form of continuity. They focus on "the intervention of chance in the emergence of forms, as it counters the routines acquired by the hand", the artist states. Flexner's intimate knowledge of the medium - in this case ink and liquid graphite - together with a range of gestures such as blowing and tilting (use of gravity), soaking and friction, which enable the artist to "push a picture to make a drawing that has pictorial qualities", as he says. Roland Flexner once told the critic and