NANZUKA presents Metanoia at NANZUKA UNDERGROUND featuring 15 new paintings by Christian Rex van Minnen. The works fuse 17th-century Baroque oil painting techniques with 20th-century Surrealism and contemporary American underground culture, often infused with a sharp sense of black humor and grotesque yet seductive imagery. The exhibition juxtaposes signature grotesque paintings with a new 'Straightforward' series adopting a classical still-life approach based on photographed market objects. Metanoia signifies change of heart and repentance, reflecting a personal regeneration from a past of cultural vandalism toward renewed attention to subject, content, and the mysterious ecstasy of historical pictures.
"I began my art career as a vandal, as a destroyer, making ugly the beautiful things of the past. I have been a vandal in the temple. Growing up in the 80s and 90s my culture was and is one of depravity, debasement and destruction and I have for many years seen myself in that same light. This is a cultural thing and true of many of my peers."
"Whether this is learned, or actual, this has been the defining quality of the culture I am in, and my work has reflected this attitude. I have recently had a change of heart and I am being regenerated. Where once I only saw the formal qualities of the pictures of the past, now I am beginning to see the subject, the content, the great mysterious ecstasy of these works."
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