Critical perspectives and texts

Certain external perspectives have accompanied my work over time.
They shed light on its intentions, its stakes, and its underlying lines of force.

Critical text — Andréas Alberti

Andréas Alberti is a writer, art critic, and specialized journalist.

“Art is not an end in itself. It is a driving force of life, a catalyst for emotions, and a powerful means of expression. Alain Rouschmeyer’s message is clear. His paintings are slices of life—generous approaches to the everyday that he manages to ‘sketch’ with delight.

The artist constructs the narrative of his life through the prism of encounters, travels, and emotions. He lays his states of mind onto the canvas like a visual diary. Painting captures a real or imagined moment; it becomes a remarkable defiance of death and oblivion. Alain Rouschmeyer allows himself to be carried by his sharpened gaze, navigating through the flow of memory. The mechanics of remembrance attach themselves to places in order to inscribe a lived moment over time. The artist composes in a similar way. Space is treated with the same intensity as the human figure. More than a simple setting, it becomes an emotional landscape. We experience the place at the same time as the depicted figures. The experience is not merely visual: we sense the atmosphere, perceive the scents and murmurs that seem to escape from the work. The flow of time comes to a halt, and we become witnesses to a passage—an instant that slips away, yet which the artist manages to hold within the canvas.

Genre scenes, scenes of life, landscapes, nudes—no subject is closed off to the artist. Technical mastery, the rendering of materials, precision of gesture, and the pursuit of an aesthetic of bodies, forms, and colors lie at the heart of his artistic approach. Rigor and acute perception are abilities notably developed through his initial training as an architect. His sensitivity to drawing is a fundamental aspect of his art. The quality of line is remarkable; it is part of the signature of the painter-architect. Sketching becomes an almost automatic form of writing. It is a point of departure, a home port from which the narrative can unfold across the canvas. The artist summons his memories, his experience of places, landscapes, bodies… Architecture naturally takes a prominent place in his work. It should be understood as a living space, a field of play, a dotted presence of humanity.

The artist’s talent is also expressed through his ability to tell a story and to draw us into his intimacy. The choice of figuration is far from incidental: it offers us reassuring points of reference, paths of identification rarely taken by contemporary creation and its cult of abstraction. The artist lays foundations, constructs a setting and an atmosphere, and allows us to imagine what comes next. Objects acquire a new dimension under his hand. They become contemporary totems. An empty chair, a pair of shoes, are enough to materialize the ghostly presence of a man and a woman whom one could almost hear behind the canvas. An everyday music seeps into the compositions like a melody—sometimes nostalgic, sensual, or compelling. A female figure returns regularly in his paintings. Is she a muse? A vestal guardian of the artist’s inner fire? Alain Rouschmeyer paints with the hands of a creator, the gaze of a poet, and a heart attuned to the beauty that surrounds us. He explores and reinterprets classical subjects of art, such as the bather so dear to the Impressionists, or the chair, an emblematic object of the avant-gardes. Nothing is left to chance in his paintings. The apparent spontaneity of composition is the result of meticulous observation and aesthetic research.

The artist moves us through his sensitivity and his poetic approach to the world around him. His painting is generous, deeply nourished. His art is an invitation to seize the day.”

— Andréas Alberti, June 2022

These words find their natural extension in the works themselves.

This gaze is part of an artistic path shaped by architecture, drawing, and painting.