Espionage, Robert Janitz’s first solo exhibition in Portugal, at Galeria Nuno Centeno, comprises fourteen new works, painted in Mexico City, Mexico.
Robert Janitz is an intuitive and “malleable” painter. Having lived in Berlin, passing through Paris, New York and, finally, Mexico City, this artist adapted to and absorbed from all these different circumstances. Each culture opened a window to a new perception about light, color, and the pictorial form, from the way Janitz observed New York’s sky, to the explosion of colours of the Indian culture.
Seeking to avoid an unswerving seriousness, Janitz embraced an irony-full, dandy alter-ego, which eases his creation process – this character removes pressure from what is, in his mind, the figure of the “artist”, and frees his most uninhibited creativity. With Espionage’s artworks, the artist exercised the use of nonconformist materials, these being the mixture of pigment, flour, eggs and wax, to produce his “paint”. This medium, envisioned by Janitz himself, became a constant mark in his body of work.
Describing his painting gestures as “spreading butter on toast”, Janitz offers an almost palpable image of his imaginary. Texture, expressivity, Art History and the mundane are collaborative elements in these energetic representations of a luminous movement over a monochromatic background.
Robert Janitz (b. 1962 in Alsfeld, Germany) lives and works in Mexico City and NY. Recent solo exhibitions of Janitz’s work include Sphinx (2023), KÖNIG, Berlin, Carmina Burrata (2022), San Carlo Cremona, Cremona, Robert Janitz (2022), Museo Diego Rivera Anahuacalli, Mexico City, Library of A Dream (2021), Canada, New York, Best of All Worlds (2021) (curated by Gianni Jetzer), Casa Gilardi, Mexico City, The Labyrinth (2021), Sevil Dolmaci Gallery, Istanbul, <3 ist ein Tippfehler (2020), KÖNIG, Berlin, and Change in Paradise (2019), KÖNIG, London. From 1982 until 1988, he studied Ethnology, Comparative Religion, Indology, and Art History at Philipps Universität Marburg in Germany. Janitz’s works are held in private and institutional collections world-wide and his practice has been the subject of numerous reviews and features in various international art publications.