Synergistic Pantheons

(written by art historian Elizabeth Rogers, on the occasion of ‘Everything Must Go!’, May 2023)

Decades of experimentation forges personal histories, and an idiosyncratic repertoire. This is how the power of contemplation and exploration encounter and unfold multifarious Mystery. We are nature, everything works in binary complimentary oppositions and dualities, at once metaphysical and figural.

Exploring the work of Roland de Fries, obliquity of the ecliptic embrace the manner of method, more significantly the identity of a work of art beyond medium, scale, subject, and artist, into more obscure discourse. Drawing inspiration and metaphors from diverse geographies and idioms of life, reigns echoes of harmonies, invoking a timeless connection between man and the universe, between the senses. In this era of rapidly wrought imagery, de Fries insists that One must look deeply, not casually, demanding myriad reflections to unfold and commingle. His oeuvres reveal layers of preparation and ensuing stages of redefinition ever and again.

In the words of Martin Heidegger (1889 – 1976), the renowned German philosopher, in particular of hermeneutics, penned in Poetry, Language, Thought, The Origin of the Work of Art: “Thus we are compelled to follow the circle. To enter upon this path is the strength of thought, from work to art a circle like the step from art to work…The artist is the origin of the work. The work is the origin of the artist. Neither is without the other. Where and how does art occur?”

Concurrently, a kindred spirit of craftsmanship and composition hovers throughout de Fries’ painting, drawings, graphic and printed works, echoing the vision beyond their geophysical environs. For the mastery of materials barely define the quest to attain, a magical blend of mind, body and spirit of conscience and artistry akin to the phoenix. His voice is poetic, with strains of music, with reflections on embodied landscapes and man-made commercial forms.

De Fries interweaves personal histories, cultural de-bunking and a highly physically intensive and idiosyncratic process of hours (sanding work and application of paint) to render oeuvres which conjure such multifold dimensions. Reinterpreting personal stories (in his drawings) of where he has dwelled and visited withstanding the passage of time, being explored and expressed anew.

Thus, in diverse cognoscenti we shall walk together through such known and conjectured space/s.