Abstract monuments in the middle of nowhere

                                 


 The acclaimed Icelandic author Þórbergur Þórðarson in one of his texts, following an elabo-rate description of the landscape of the north; the clear skies, forests, green volcanoes and the endless ocean, sat down and took a shit. Lucas Rollin displays similar attitudes in his paintings.Coming to terms with the fact that man along with his history area part of nature. One could immagine a soundtrack of Wagner and Spacemen 3 for the Alsacian setting Lucas provides the viewer with. Aformer war field, Alsace switched German and French identity four times in less than a century. «I don’t remember a single family meeting where the war was not discussed» says Lucas. There is an uneasiness to the landscape of mountains and pine forests and the hypnotic light.  Reoccurring signs and sym-bols create a personal mythology that has no direct meaning but establishes a kind of mysticism that invites the viewer to introduce his own meaning. 

 Absurd monuments arise in the middle of nowhere.  Lucas’ recent experiments with sculpture seem to be an extended study of this increasing emphasis on the sculptural element in his paintings.  Both in painting and sculpture it is focused on the abstraction of mundane objects, houses, logs and sticks that become almost ironically playful in their paradoxical vibrant banality. It is in these environments where silence becomes palpable.

In his creation Lucas Rollin expresses that sublime state.  He invites the viewer to a state of ultimate melancholy, in the orange-pink light which was branded by artist Ragnar Kjartansson in his work ‘Scandinavian Pain’, displaying a shed similar to the ones in Lucas paintings full of works by Edward Munch. After this intentive work on the ‘mise en scène’, Lucas adapts the same kind of punk attitude as Þórbergur Þórðarson towards the circumstance. Churches and guns fly and people have sex, nature is interrupted by history and pshycadelic rock, but it’s ok, because that’s how it works.  It expresses an understanding that lies in the sadness and seriousness of history, the bleakness and melancholy of nature, in existental pain; «Life is killing my rock and roll».

Sigurður Atli Sigurðsson