Arsen Roje

Art Brokerage: Arsen Roje Croatian Artist: b. 1937-1971. He was educated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, Croatia, before moving to Paris in 1965 with another move to New York before settling in Los Angeles in 1971. He has stated: I see a man and woman trapped inside their bodies and at the mercy of time. To express this idea I eliminate what’s associated with the body, space and environment, the outside world. Alone, a single body occupies the whole picture. It’s a field of flesh, a bodyscape.Starting with a trigger image I make a number of thumbnail sketches until the idea becomes clear to me. The idea always evolves around a discomforting state of the body, physically limited but emotionally rich. Flesh struggles, a spasm in the shoulder, a nervous pull of the stomach, tension of the turning hip, a twisting spine. My working process is instinctual and I never know how it is going to evolve or end. Emotionally charged and free of rational control, I let my brushwork distill what is useful until the body becomes one dynamic unit. For me painting is not a way of knowing but a way of being in the moment, a promise of expression. There are no arrivals, only departures, an inconclusive monologue in paint.