Say Yes When You Want To Say No is an artwork consisting of a series of paintings and short videos. The paintings are the result of the interaction between Roukens’ obsessive perfectionism and his resistance to it. During the painting process, he conducted experiments to free himself from this obsessive tendency, aiming to find the sublime moment of the in-between experience. Each painting emerged from a combination of decisive choices and doubt.

For this series, Roukens worked from his own archive of experiments, colours, and patterns. The selected color combination, consisting of four colours, originated from various tests for earlier paintings. The pattern he used is derived from If You Can’t Be Good, Be Weird #3 and consists of a square grid with one larger square at the center.

The experiments ranged from deliberately breaking pre-established rules, such as leaving a pattern unfinished, to changing the color combination during the process and allowing chance through the use of tape. All of these experiments compelled him to keep working on the painting and sustained the tension between order and chaos.