With I Forgot To Say Stop On Our Way Home and Checkmate, Roukens continues his search into the experience of the ‘in-between’. A visual research between high and low contrast, circle and square and between hand-painted surfaces versus those with tape. A new addition to Roukens’ toolkit to break through existing patterns, is his so-called ‘painting-further’. Where surfaces overlap, new surfaces are created. In I Forgot To Say Stop On Our Way Home, Roukens refers to a moment where you lose control while in motion. At the same time Checkmate refers to the unpredictability and the finality of the painting process. Getting to a point where you can’t continue, even if that’s your intention.

Daan Roukens paints the doubt and aims to make this conflict visible and perceptible by means of patterns, color and abstraction. He searches for that intermediate experience in the contradiction. Where it agitates, but is also balanced. In addition, he feels the strong need to take the viewer into this process and does so by making videos of the painting process. He sees his artworks as a translation of his controlled chaos that reflect everyday dilemmas. Since Covid-19, his biographical work forms an even greater proverbial mirror for the viewer. In which the social debate between opposites is larger than ever.