Jean-Daniel Rohrer

The work of Jean-Daniel Rohrer is evocative of the mystic tradition.  His mixed-media creations employ the concept and image of the scroll, the original form of the sacred text.  Runes and glyphs abound on his canvases—sometimes on his "parchments," sometimes floating in the space of the periphery—as well as Latin letters and Roman and Arabic numerals that have been intentionally divorced from their usual functions.  There is the play of irony in his work.  Some of his ostensibly "sacred" texts are nothing more than pages plucked from newspapers of his native Canada.  Elsewhere he uses Catholic iconography to apotheosize the image and not its original contextual subject.  Underpinning it all are wefts of painted texture that rival those of the finest Persian rugs.  The closer the inspection by the viewer, the richer the reward.

Rorher's work is widely prized, and his oeuvre is spread out in collections in Canada, the United States, France, Switzerland, Italy, and Russia.