The Irish Times, Wednesday, August 22, 2007

The Arts Visual Arts by Adrian Dunne

Trek Elk, Robert Janz. Peppercanister Gallery, 3 Herbert St Until Sep 14

Robert Janz’s Trek Elk at the Peppercanister Gallery is even more vibrant and inventive than his show there last year. He is best known for his fast paced accounts of flowers blooming and fading, and there has consistently been a performative aspect to his explorations of evanescence. A fine draughtsman with an instinct for expressing energy through form, he has also emerged as a strikingly good sculptor.

While there are many fine paintings in his current show, they are somewhat upstaged by a veritable menageri of animal (and a couple of shaman) sculptures. In these, again, Janz excels at conveying energy and vitality. He builds figures out of twings and box-wood fragments, using glue and thread and paint. His emblematic creatures include elk, wolf and shaman, and there is a mythological dimension to them. They are in a way physically insubstantial, but they are real presences, brilliantly observed and demonstrating janz’s gift for expressive line.

In Dublin Arts & Culture

Trek Elk, Robert Janz. Peppercanister Gallery, 3 Herbert St

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

This is only the second exhibition by Belfast-born painter Janz, and one of the most exciting the city has seen for sometime.  A member of the international Fluxus movement in the 60's and 70's, his work is increasingly concerned with the threat of global warming.  His previous exhibition at the gallery showed his vivid trademark-depictions of tullips and roses in various stages of growth and decay.

Mosre of these metaphorical paintings are embraced in this exhibition, incorporating designs of Japanese origin.  Really chin-scratching stuff.

Aidan Dunne    The Irish Times  18 Aug 06

The idea of impermanence is at the heart of his work, which takes several,

often transient forms, including sequential drawings and paintings of flowers

blooming and fading, films, sculptures and performance interventions.  “I was

inspired”, he writes, “by the Zen notion that the life of a flower is a compact

summary of mortality.”  The Garden Gate is the entrance to a sanctuary and

hence the border between two worlds.  The other group of works in this show,

Narrow Road, encompass wider swathes of landscape, but in an equally dynamic

fashion, inspired by Japanese artists like Sesshu Toyo, whose scroll paintings

encompass a whole year’s passing.  Janz makes fluid, overlapping images that

aim to convey “a drifting shifting sense of passage, of tempo, of travel: a time

awareness”.  The show includes some of his beautiful, delicate twig sculptures

of caribou.