Ceysson & Bénétière

Roland Quetsch

In much of Quetsch’s work, the choice of materials, the means of manipulating them, and the spaces created by them are considered their content. The advantage of remaining within a traditional form such as painting is that it affords the ability to address the tenor, stresses and disarray of contemporary life from the vantage point of meditative remove, accompanied by sensate dramatics. This creates a psychic charge that seems to draw on the past as it fully addresses the present.

Joe Fyfe, excerpt from the catalogue 'Roland Quetsch', Editions Ceysson, 2018 

Ceysson & Bénétière has collaborated for many years with artist Roland Quetsch, who once again surprises us with an entirely new presentation of his work on the occasion of the exhibition held at Ceysson & Bénétière, New York, in January 2025.

Since the beginning of his career, Roland Quetsch has worked with color, a theme he varies through a palette taking the form of tiles or strips. The artist structures his visual concept on stretched canvases while reinventing the very materiality of painting and pushing his approach further. Previously, as if zooming in to the extreme on a photograph, his smoothed colors, covered in a glossy varnish, appeared silky, almost liquid. The surface of the canvas, composed of multiple juxtaposed color tiles, presented a visual structure that conveyed the idea of arrangement.

Today, Roland Quetsch takes his practice further by allowing color to spread beyond the frame, pushing the boundaries of his work as we knew it. The canvas surface becomes a new field of exploration. The tiled construction gives way to a new form of pictorial expansion. The tiling transforms into an overlay of torn, cut, and individually worked pieces of canvas, remnants of the artist's ongoing experimentation in finding new forms and methods for applying paint, using simple gestures that sometimes lead to surprising, unplanned outcomes.

With this exhibition by Ceysson & Bénétière, Roland Quetsch takes us on a journey through color. A monumental corner installation of a wrack hanging unique pieces of fabric invites visitors to step into color and navigate through its layers. Facing this large-scale installation are watercolors, perhaps preliminary designs for the paintings of the East Room. An experiment or a constant search for the perfect combination? 

Then, we encounter generously sized paintings where these strips of fabric are pasted and harmonized onto the surface of a traditional canvas. Here, we are introduced to a range of formats the artist never used before.

Each work is the result of reflection on the combination of colors, the result of folding, crumpling, or layering as part of the artist’s experimentation. The surface collage is raw and unpretentious. There is a certain honesty in it that perfectly reflects its creator.

Roland Quetsch was born in 1979 in Luxembourg. He lives and works in Capellen, Luxembourg. After obtaining a Master’s in Fine Arts from the University of Strasbourg, France, Roland Quetsch returned to Luxembourg, where he teaches Visual Arts and continues his practice as an independent artist.

Maëlle Ebelle, September 2024

Ceysson & Bénétière
956 Madison Avenue
10021 New York