GALLERY / EXHIBITIONS
EXHIBITIONS
Robert Janitz
Labyrinth
11.11.2021 – 11.12.2021
Labyrinth
Robert Janitz was the first international guest of Sevil Dolmacı Art Residency which was created in the summer of 2021. A solo exhibition composed of the works born out of his journey in Istanbul titled ‘The Labyrinth” will open at Sevil Dolmacı Art Gallery on November 11, 2021.
Named after the labyrinth where the Minotaur, one of the fiercest creatures of Ancient Greece was held, the exhibition will be Robert Janitz’s first solo show in Turkey. Legend has it that the Minotaur, a half-human half-bull creature, constituted a great danger to his surroundings because as the unnatural offspring of a woman and a beast, it had no natural source of nourishment and thus devoured humans for sustenance. In order to hold him, a gigantic labyrinth was necessary to be built. However, in order to tame his appetite, a selection of the most beautiful young men and women had to be sent to the Minotaur every seven years for sacrifice. Finally, Theseus, the hero who ended the monster’s terror could only do so by following the yarn given to him by his lover Ariadne.
The Labyrinth is also the culmination of the many observations Robert Janitz made during his month-long stay in Istanbul. The many “lines” that the inhabitants no longer notice, from the exorbitant traffic to the boats roaming on Bosphorus, even the lines that shaped our cultural and historical identities were all sources of inspiration for Janitz. The works that emerged during the residency period have an important place in the artist’s career since they are the outcomes of his “Volcano Head Paintings” series that had already started in Mexico where he currently resides.
Robert Janitz expresses his thoughts and feelings about his Istanbul residency as follows:
“I grew up with threads, with weaving, my mom is a weaver, and with ‘oriental’ rugs my dad liked to collect. Colored threads on my brain since childhood.
They say that interlacing lines with a loom is the origin of computing.
So here we are, the brush mark, the line computing realities and Turkish, a language I do not speak, but somehow understand.
I took in the city a few days: I understood the tuğrâ, the seal, of Süleyman the Magnificent as a calligraphed textile word. Discovered the ‘word- portraits’ in the Topkapi palace and read about the Turkish knot in rug making. I started connecting the lines on canvas.
Then immersed myself in my painting studio. I had seen enough of the labyrinth to know that I was the Minotaur and I was Ariadne.
My days became elliptical. Became days making decisions in paint. Timeline decisions with a
gradient background. The staccato of mark making became the eternal snaking line of the Moebius strip.
I forgot how time passed. I forgot myself. A new body of work emerged. What had been Volcano head paintings in my Mexican life became lines of time. What had been juxtaposed capital letters became handwriting without language.
And to my surprise, after weeks of painting, I discovered that those painted lines in time, that so took a life of their own, where in fact hollow, like the Italian pasta called rigatoni.”
Robert Janitz’s solo exhibition “The Labyrinth” can be seen at Sevil Dolmacı Art Gallery from November 11 until December 11, 2021.
Born in 1962 in Alsfeld in Germany, Robert Janitz lives and works between Mexico City and New York. He has recently had exhibitions at Casa Gilardi, Mexico (2021), at Kõnig gallery, Berlin (2020), at Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland in 2019, at CANADA, New York (2018), Anton Kern (2018), Meyer Riegger (2017, 2015 and 2014), Team Gallery, New York (2017 and 2015), Shoot the Lobster (2012) and Clearing, Brussels (2012 and 2011). Forthcoming exhibitions include the MAZ museum, Guadalajara, and Museo Anahuacalli, Mexico City in 2022. He was Professor at École Supérieure Des Beaux Arts, Cherbourg, France in 2009 and a Guest Lecturer of VisualArts at University Paris 8, Paris, France from 2003 to 2007.
His first monographic publication MADE IN NEW YORK was published by Distanz Verlag, Berlin in 2020.