James Roper
Sonitusluminis
Oil on canvas
110cm x 130cm
Roper has exhibited widely throughout the world including solo shows in New York, London, San Francisco, Barcelona and Milan. Alongside his painting, drawing, sculpture and film-making Roper hasalso worked as an illustrator for clients such as Nike, Facebook, MTV, Ford, NBA, Converse and Adobe. Roper draws inspiration from a varied array of sources, from Japanese animation, comic books and film, to psychedelia, Baroque sculpture and haute couture fashion - plus everything in between - a clash of sometimes contradictory elements from which arises his unique multi-faceted visual style.
Artist Statement :
The title of my new series of paintings ‘Metanoia’ is a word derived from Greek meaning “changing one’s mind”. This mental shift is explored in the work through the use of semi-abstraction which encourages the viewer to enter into a visual state of limbo, where the brain attempts to pull the image together, to make sense of the recognizable parts, but instead is left with an unreliable shifting surface of altering states and metamorphic structures. Carl Jung also used the term ‘Metanoia’ to indicate the spontaneous attempt of the psyche to heal itself of unbearable conflict by melting down and then being reborn in a more adaptive form. This alchemical mental process, often intentionally brought on in shamanic traditions through hallucinogenic journeys into the liminal realm of the subconscious, arises in the work as structures fall apart and reform, dark into light, earth into air, day into night, solid into liquid, figurative into abstraction, and vice versa, capturing the turbulent moment of transition between one state and the next.
Courtesy of saachiart.com, jamesroperart.com
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