ART REVIEW IN THE LEADING DAILY
The art speaks for itself at Michael Rogatchi’s SHE exhibition at the Topelius Art Gallery in Helsinki. This exhibition is proof that one can recognise life’s great values and make it recognisable to others in the way of a world-class art. This artist uses his trade-mark powerful colours because it is the best way to make paintings as alive as life itself is. Beautiful spring colours dominate the entire Topelius gallery, and the refreshing breath of a full and dynamic life comes out throughout all the paintings, as if there were a nice easy spring wind of renewing.
Michael Rogatchi’s own Jewishness is mixed into his works, with the main patterns of his two predecessors: the expressionism of van Gogh, and another Jewish master, Chagall. Rogatchi’s composition and unique “dream pictures” successfully inherited Chagall’s approach. There is no wonder that the artist, who is working in the rare manner of metaphorical expressionism, has already made a chain of successful exhibitions in London over the years. He exhibits there regularly.
The theme and the name of this one-man show is She. “This is to pay my respect to women who inspires me a lot, as my wife is doing to me, and whom you never could know completely. Woman is a mystery. She always is a mystery, and she always will be. And this mystery is a constant drive for me,” – says Rogatchi standing next to the title work of the exhibition, named She. The work portrays an incredibly gentle woman, a portrait done in a very refreshing manner.
Another very interesting and important work is Clean Page, the work which has got a lot of the viewers’ attention. “When a person is coming into this world, what he or she is entitled to, our potential future, all which is given to us in the beginning of a child’s life is as a sort of a clean page. And this is mainly up to a person what will appear on that page, what it would be like, in the end. No one is predominantly committed to do only good or only bad things in one’s life. But the decisions, decisions are done by yourself. Isn’t it so?,” – explains Michael Rogatchi about this extraordinary painting.
Paulina Ylikoski, art critic, Ilta-Sanomat, Finland.