| previous | All about Drawing 100 Dutch Artists Curator: Diana Wind, Arno Kramer Catalogue Stedelijk Museum Schiedam Yasmijn Jarram, Art Historian The work of Alexandra Roozen is inaccessible and accessible at the same time. Inaccessible due to the purely abstract character that lacks any form of visual hold, and may put off the spectator on that account. But for the very same reason it is actually accessible as well: the beholder can decide for himself what the meaning of the work is. Nobody sees the same things - and therefore each person's own view is always correct. One the one hand, we observed break-neck speed in flashing horizontal lines, on the other, we view a secret tranquil landscapes in the fog. Or a TV screen with swarming white noise. A dark sky filled with stars. Vast fields in the night. Sometimes another, more organic picture seems to brew below the surface, caught in a screen of taut lines. Although the works are lacking of colour, they cover all shades of the range between black and white. At close quarters, the patterns bewilder the spectator in an Escherian way. At the same time, what attracts attention is the fact that the work is not as cool and calculated as it looks: despite the endless repetition, not nearly all the lines and figures are identical. When you look closely, Roozen's hand can clearly be traced. In fact, this is an almost inconceivable achievement, particularly in her pencil drawings. This does not hold true, however, for all her works: for some of them she works with a drill instead of a pencil. This way she explores the boundaries of the two-dimensional surface: when do you stop calling a work 'flat'? Time and again Roozen puts up a fight with the criteria of the image as well as with the role of the artist's hand. She explores the third dimension by (literally) grinding and drilling, but also by manually playing with depth and space, light and dark, black and white, casualness and concentration. On account of all these elements, Roozen's work is fascinating enough in itself on a material level. A remarkable artist, with the pencil as well as with the hand-drill. |
 |