Rolf van Rooij (b. 2003) started his photographic practice creating photographs while exploring urban environments. In these photographs, he often includes people in a rather abstract form. This gives the otherwise graphic representation of e.g. architecture something humane and gracious. This can sometimes result in a detached feeling for the viewer. Every work consists of elements that can be looked at separately but always work together.
Recently he started making abstract impressions. The creative process behind these works is a critical examination of photography as a medium, a search for what he calls an honest artwork and also a form of self expression.
Photography is most often seen as a figurative medium. But, what happens when you take away all these figurative elements of a photograph? What happens when a photograph becomes abstract? His Photographic Abstraction relies on its own internal logic that consists of a dynamic between black and white, structure, flow, form and texture.
Instead of representing visual aspects of our reality, he aims to convey his own interpretation of reality through abstraction; therewith representing something beyond the physical.