Roel van der Linden – There’s no need to complicate everything, things will take care of themselves
The Dutch painter Roel Jeroen van der Linden (b. 1982) has been living in the Czech Republic for many years. Yet the centuries‑old roots of his family lie in what was then colonial Indonesia. How did Roel end up here? He first studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and then—surely to his benefit—continued his studies in Prague, in the painting studio of Jiří Černický (and his assistant Marek Meduna) at UMPRUM. There he naturally met and connected with fellow painters from this studio (David Krňanský, Martin Lukáč) as well as from the neighboring studio led by Jiří David (Roman Výborný, Julius Reichel).
If the common denominator among these colleagues is their movement within abstract or semi‑abstract painterly approaches—while also absorbing social context and intervening in gallery spaces and beyond—Roel is different, and in his own way a more complex author. Painting is, for him, an open field for diverse visual strategies, supported by his excellent technical skill. He handles smooth realist painting just as confidently as various stages of abstraction. It is, naturally, difficult to pinpoint a single factor that connects his diverse visual creations, so in the end one must conclude that it is precisely this diversity that is Roel’s signature.
Still, I would highlight one of Roel’s painterly inclinations: works executed in smooth realist technique that tend toward symbolic or post‑surrealist expression, often with post‑conceptual interventions. Contemporary young painting is today heavily populated with surrealizing narratives, yet few reach Roel’s level of formal and conceptual virtuosity. Roel does not hesitate to combine smooth painting with modernist procedures, and at times he fully succumbs to modernism. He often begins from landscape realism—as befits an heir to Dutch Baroque landscape painting—but across this foundation sweeps a whirlwind of anything and everything, from expressive narration to whatever else can be imagined.
It’s fortunate Roel wasn’t working during the eclectically charged postmodern eighties—he would have been unstoppable. His stylistic surfing of today is already more than enough. I saw him last year in Mikulov creating a long, continuous abstract painting—very long—and that was shortly after he produced an even longer one at an airport. “I painted a 1,067.7‑meter‑long painting,” Roel reported at the time. And since I’m already quoting, let me add a remark by Jiří Ptáček about Roel’s approach to painting:
“A few paintings won’t tell us much; it’s important to see dozens of them and perceive the shifting interest in a certain motif or relationship, while also noting the moment of subversion that sooner or later arrives.”
It’s beautifully written, and it saves me from having to think too hard about what to add. It’s simply intelligent and excellent painting—Roel is like an all‑inclusive museum of modern art. And one more note: he arrived in the Czech Republic in the summer of 2014, for those who love precise dates.
There’s a bit of everything in this exhibition
Roel Jeroen van der Linden 