2018
Video work
41:41 min

The Abstract Self-Portrait emphasis on the experience of the (painting) process. Roukens’ paintings portray what is going on in his head in an abstract way. He continuously experiences a restless feeling between order and chaos. 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 this never-ending search for a peace of mind, Roukens experiences the contradicting and connecting moment of the in-between as sublime. For this film, he transformed painting Say Yes When You Want To Say No #6 into video and sound. It unfolds with each added layer, where color accentuates a tone and no paint implies no sound. Creating new gateways through that process into that in-between feeling of self-restraint and complete freedom. The video constructs moments of contradictions and connections between process and result, painting and sound and between artist and spectator.