GUIDO VROLIX - BIO 2023

After painting with color lines for most of last year, I returned to the silhouette-based surfaces but stuck to the concept of multi-panels, I wasn't done with that idea yet.

If you think about it, a diptych (even on a single canvas) never had a center, or rather, it had two. Which led to a kind of intervention that had less to do with painting than with concept. A very interesting concept. And a problem that needed to be solved.
The Dream (oil & glaze medium on canvas, 120 x 140 cm, 2023).

After months of painting with colored lines instead of surfaces, as I usually did, I reached a point where I had said all I had to say.
When a series nears its end, there came a point where painting began to feel like repetition rather than invention.
So I returned to what I named my colorfield paintings.

There were two kinds of landscapes, one of nature and one of the body.
Nexus (diptych, oil & glaze medium on canvas, 2x 100 x 200 cm, 2023).

The image sided by a void.

Painting a surface in one color (such as yellow) means not just one tone, but many...

Soon I developed the concept of multi-panels more and more, until finally I had one of the panels only in color without any subject.
Or rather, the narrative was in the other panel.

On the one hand you had the banal, the normal, life as we know it. On the other side was the void. The combination of the two shaped our lives.

In the painting The Bath, in the first version, the deep blue on the right was originally a greenish pond with sea roses.
The Bath (diptych, oil & glaze medium on canvas, 2x 50 x 100 cm, 2023).

The black panel was invaded by drops of color from the left panel. After all, it was a void.
Embracing The Void (diptych, oil & glaze medium on canvas, 2x 60 x 120 cm, 2023).

One not without the other.

Soon I realized that there was more than one way to present these works.

Although some were kind of a dead end...

Things are what they seem.

Another way to work with double panels was to paint the same subject twice, one representational and one abstract.

For example, if it were a portrait, then so would the second canvas, just an abstract (pixelated?) version of it. So you would need both panels to read the entire diptych.
Double Portrait of A. (diptych, oil & glaze medium on canvas, 2x 40 x 60 cm, 2023).

I found that these diptychs work better the more distance between them.
Double Portrait of C. (diptych, oil & glaze medium on canvas, 2x 40 x 60 cm, 2023).

A diptych, both sides hanging on the opposite wall, so you have to look at each canvas separately, which emphasizes that the two paintings are the same, or at least have the same subject.
Double Nude of B. (diptych, oil & glaze medium on canvas, 2x 80 x 160 cm, 2023).

You had to walk the distance...
Double Portrait of D. (diptych, oil & glaze medium on canvas, 2x 40 x 60 cm, 2023).

Representation & Abstraction.

Working on two panels at the same time made it possible to represent the same reality in two completely different ways.
So the question was not so much what abstraction was, but what wasn't?

Next To The Red Pillar (diptych, oil & glaze medium on canvas, 2x 60 x 120 cm, 2023).

Blooming End (diptych, oil & glaze medium on canvas, 2x 80 x 160 cm, 2023).

The Pavilion (diptych, oil & glaze medium on canvas, 2x 100 x 200 cm, 2023).

Another way to create a diptych was to divide one image (say a portrait) into two halves, one side representative and the other abstract.

The Swimming Lesson (oil & glaze medium on canvas, 120 x 140 cm, 2023).

While I usually prefer large canvases, I've painted quite a few smaller ones over the last couple of years. The layout did not necessarily had to be vertical, it can also be horizontal.
Open Kimono (oil & glaze medium on canvas, 40 x 60 cm, 2023).
The Purple Sweater (oil & glaze medium on canvas, 40 x 60 cm, 2023).