Fingers, wheels, cameras. Fingers holding and carving different fingers, fingers holding cameras, legs working wheels. A residential road, wheat fields, an workplace setting.

The works of W. Rossen current objects with such affection that one doubts their existence as objects. Wheels are a recurring matter, imposing a sculpture-like high quality. Usually thought of a round part supposed to rotate, Rossen’s wheels behold intimacy and elicit sympathy. Is the wheel to be understood as a functioning entity or an summary monument? And are the objects to be seen or sensed as wheels in Rossen’s work, composed as such but with important dissimilarities? The work discard the fast useful function of the portrayed objects, shaping them like a sculptor’s hand carving the uncooked materials. Whether or not to be perceived as purposeful parts or as contours of summary sculpture, the wheels transfer (or roll, one may say) via Rossen’s works, frequently recurring and negating retention.

Topics happen solely via the fingers and legs holding or working objects. In After Engewormer, 2022, a hand holds a digicam because the lens initiatives a panorama—the optical instrument reveals us what’s being captured, the lens’ reflection hiding as a panorama portray in plain sight. In Handen, Kamer, 2022, fingers maintain and carve different, smaller fingers. In entrance of the fingers at work rests a movie digicam, rising from the canvas via the strategy of making use of dried items of acrylic medium onto the canvas (maintaining every little thing acrylic on canvas), consequently injecting a three-dimensional high quality into the in any other case flat illustration.

Objects, as devices or parts, change into bearers of propulsive energy via which they transfer between Rossen’s work. Åsgårdstrand, 2022, reveals a road from an Edvard Munch portray from 1902. In Rossen’s impression, the road is disadvantaged of color and figures. A golden wheel leans in opposition to a fence, resembling a wheel from Jan van Goyen’s Panorama with Oak from 1634. The contours of Munch’s road emerge from the canvas via the dried acrylic medium. The white-ground image airplane with the outlines of a public house seems as a sparse icon portray, the prised gold lowered to the leaning wheel. Within the foreground, the silhouette of the movie digicam recurs.

Whereas Jan van Goyen’s wheel seems unequivocally wrecked, Rossen’s wheels are modified, and their function recomposed. In Ostend, 2022, the first-person perspective of a motorbike rider suggests wheels. One can think about the wheels on the bike however not see them. In Engewormer, 2022, one-third of a motorbike wheel with a chainset positioned in a wheat subject turns into a sophisticated, nearly surreal, agricultural instrument. The house between the spokes seems like they’re stretched with skinny rice paper.

W. Rossen approaches the canvas together with his fingers and ft, capturing objects and projecting different photographs onto them. With the identical set of instruments, the artist’s actions activate the wheels, driving them ahead. The work’ retained segments of our bodies and conflicting views insinuate a right here—whether or not a Norwegian seaside city or a Dutch wheat subject. Rossen employs recognisable objects and surroundings as collages, thus sculpting a particular system of that means. The recognisability alludes to a “right here,” however the place?

—Lukas Flygare

at Wschód, Warsaw
till March 23, 2023