ROBERT
JANITZ
Big
Apple
Mexico City, August, 2020 by Robert Janitz
Exhibition view: How I Learned to Love the F at Shoot The Lobster, New York City, USA, 2012
Born in 1962 in the German town of Ahlsfeld, painter Robert Janitz has lived and worked in New York since 2010, following stints in Paris and Cherbourg. Last year he moved into another studio in Mexico City.
Distanz Verlag has dedicated a cataloge to his large-scale canvas works of the New York years: Robert Janitz, Made in New York (144 pages, 2020). The following is an excerpt from the artist’s personal foreword, as well as an insight into the publication’s extensive series of images.
Exhibition view: Anton Kern Gallery, New York City, USA, 2019
Much has been said about the Big Apple, much has been repeated. To me, New York fulfilled the promise I sensed it had in store: it was the perfect stage for me to become more than the baggage I had brought from Europe. 2020-2010—ten years of me painting in New York. Ten years down the rabbit hole, ten years forward, ten years present—what is a decade when its last six months are an eternity?
Nostalgia is a stranger here. New York lives in the present tense.
Exhibition view: College Robert Janitz at Canada, New York City, USA, 2018
I came to realize a painting is less about surface than it is about time. It only exists in a transience, in the shared time of the onlooker.