George Rouy’s figurative practice is an exercise in introspection—an attempt at mapping the turmoil of the human experience. With densely-textured paint, dynamic abstraction, and vibrant color, his artworks bring into focus the corporeal involucrum mediating our interactions with the outer world, only to unveil what’s happening deep within us, in spaces that eyes can’t reach and hands can’t feel.
At first curvilinear, monochromatic, and soft-edged—more akin to primordial depictions of the human figure than to the shape-shifting silhouettes fronted by his contemporary inspirations—Rouy’s bodies have been progressively stripped of their voluminous, soothing features to mirror the restlessness of the human condition. Now fluid and elusive, the protagonists of his chameleonic canvases represent “the opposite tensions that orchestrate our relationship with others, ourselves, and the spaces we come to inhabit.”
