Roel van der Linden: Landscapes Without Coordinates
6/6 2025 – 3/8 2025
The artist Roel van der Linden (*1982) was born in the Netherlands, though his family roots reach back to colonial Indonesia. He studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and later in the painting studio of Jiří Černický and Marek Meduna at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. He eventually settled in Prague, where he continues to live and work.
Roel van der Linden’s practice is characterised by a diversity of painterly approaches and a deliberate crossing of boundaries. In his works, he often shapes and alters reality to remind us that in painting, anything is possible. At GaP, he presents a series of paintings in which realist landscape serves as a starting point for bold surreal interventions. Van der Linden began working with landscape roughly five years ago as a way to train the backgrounds for his long‑standing series of self‑portraits. This body of work is therefore the result of a painterly journey — from the need to improve the backgrounds of his portraits to a fully developed interest in landscape as an independent subject.
Van der Linden’s landscapes are not direct records of specific places, but rather loose visions in which memories of the Swiss Alps, the Slovak mountains, and the surroundings of Kosoř, where his studio is located, intertwine. These are inner landscapes, shaped by memory, imagination, and painterly gesture. His approach is intuitive, yet grounded in a deep knowledge of the craft; working with oil paint, colour, and layering becomes a means of seeking the “inevitable conclusion” of each painting.
The exhibition does not offer a concrete message or programmatic statement. Instead, it opens a space for free interpretation — a quiet immersion into a world between reality and dream, where landscape is neither political metaphor nor illustration, but rather the embodiment of an inner experience of freedom.
Roel Jeroen van der Linden 