Daan Roukens is a Dutch visual artist, known for his diverse and colourful abstract self-portraits. He portrays what is going on in his head in an abstract way. Roukens continuously experiences a restless feeling as a result of the tension between order and chaos along with other contradictions. When he experiences too much chaos, he lets his obsessive perfectionism run free and if that structure becomes too dominant, he will add chaos again. In his never-ending search for a peace of mind, Roukens experiences the contradicting and connecting moment of the in-between as sublime.

Through his art Roukens gives new value to daily life by questioning contradictions that most people take for granted. He feels the strong need to take the viewer into this process and changes everyday recognizable things in such a way that it broadens his and their perspective. Various opposing answers can coexist and together they exceed thinking in black-and-white terms.

He successfully graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art at AKV St. Joost (Den Bosch, 2009) and obtained his Master of Fine Art degree at the Sandberg Instituut (Amsterdam, 2018). His work varies from autonomous projects to commissions and is acknowledged by a broad audience in museums, galleries, shops and fairs. Daan Roukens lives and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

25 Jun   Expect Nothing, Appreciate Everything

I’m very excited to share with you my new series of artworks: Expect Nothing, Appreciate Everything. It’s the completion of my Masters program at the Sandberg Instituut. Although I successfully graduated in 2018, these artworks required more research and were finished in the past year. The complete series embodies 5 works on paper, 5 paintings, 2 videos and 1 audio piece.

Stay informed about my latest artworks, exhibitions and other special news.