Léopoldine Roux December 2008

Canvas, I felt, was not the right support for my paintings because it necessitates a static reading on the wall (fixed – right and left, up and down ). What I really wanted was to conceal the surface, to break down the status quo … So I started to work on the idea that paint is everywhere and that painting is spatial and alive. Streets and local public areas became my canvas. Since 2004 I have produced different action paintings for outside. The ’Pink Fountains’, the big ’sweating’ colours, painting on chewing gum, painting for birds, painting for the sky (coming soon!). With those actions I try to make abstract painting objective, popular, sensitive, and sometimes ludic. I want to contaminate the area around the idea that abstract painting has its own way of being physical. The minimal statement: What you see is what there is is an obvious concrete vision of life, of seeing the world, of perceiving colours and forms. Where everybody can create their own experience. Minimal art provides the possibility to explore relations and tensions between forms, colours, time and space, without reference to images. I want to explore minimal art, to create connections, to stimulate behaviour and to make people’s eyes smile! Like I do in my pop actions, creating situations and curiosity, forms and colours free of imposed interpretation. They are what they are and you see them the way you are. “ The colours in Leopoldine Roux ‘s painting become a medium, the colours gain in autonomy and give the work its identity. We want to touch them, to smell them, and – why not? – to taste them. It’s a sensitive way of painting the appetite for everyday life.” * I would say: ”It’s a sensitive way of exploring minimal painting” .LR, cross roads, note d’atelier 16 08 2008* Bernard Marcelis In ’compiler la couleur’, Wintergloss catalogue