The Oneness of All Things
In dialogue with Alfie Rouy
FVTVRIST speaks with Alfie Rouy on the occasion of Intercepteur, his recent exhibition at Robegago Gallery in Paris. The series deepens his ongoing inquiry into balance and oneness, and continues the shift from figuration toward a more distilled visual language. In this conversation, he reflects on the role of meditation, rhythm, and control in his process, and on painting as a means of aligning thought, body, and material.
Interceptor - Acrylic and Oil on Canvas, 85x100cm, 2025
The title Intercepteur suggests an act of catching something mid-flight. What are you intercepting here?
The interception is the convergence of all things to create a balanced oneness.
There’s a new density to this series: thicker surfaces, more tension in the layering. Has your relationship to material and texture changed while preparing for Intercepteur?
I’d say so, yeah, my practice for a while has been a result of balancing my intuitive mind with my rational mind, allowing both to work as one. This has had a knock on effect that loosend while also tightened me up. I’ve found that in finding balance in the midst of contradictions that they turn out to be the same thing when viewed from a different perspective. The more I find myself in balance, everything else ceases to exist as it once was. This perspective has shifted everything in my life, so therefore it has changed the way I paint, what was once aligned with me is no longer.
The White Veil of Glorfindel, Acrylic and Oil on Canvas, 60 x 75cm, 2025
Some of your earlier works, such as The Quiet Nonchalance of Death, were more figurative, while Intercepteur moves toward abstraction. What prompted this shift?
For quite a few years I could feel a more abstract mindset slowly form, I kept having urges to implement more non-figurative forms, so over time I gradually phased out obvious looking figures until it got to a point where figures were no longer serving any satisfaction. However, I do find that some of the shapes I create take on some sort human-like appearance, I think this is just a hangover from years of figuration.
I think ultimately though, I realised that a face will always be recognised and associated with a face first before anything else, and if i wanted to create works that went beyond a human form, and transmit more abstract energy, human features would have to be eradicated. I felt keeping figuration in my work was holding me back as it was limiting the expression of energy I desired, especially if I wanted to create a more abstruse narrative, which is where it has lead me. I prefer the term abstruse rather than abstract for my work as I like to find the easy in the difficult and the difficult in the easy. This goes back to the title Intercepteur, and the act of all these things converging, switching perspectives and realising within that nothing is out of place, the worst thing and the best thing possible are equals and therefore do not exist, its only the perspective we choose to uphold that determines our experience and feelings towards this.
What role do the body and human figures play throughout your recent paintings?
Pretty much all paintings are a result of repetitive body movements in some form or another, so from this I have really tried to tap into a frequency that allows for precise predetermined strokes while leaving space for more spontaneous mark making. I find myself almost doing a dance with the paintings as I paint them, especially once they reach their later stages.
The music I listen to definitely has an impact on the creation process, I need to be listening to something that is aligned to my current energy otherwise I find that I cant tap into that desired moment of dance that often reaps great results. My paintings used to display the human body, now they are a result of the human body.
Paradoxical Contradictive Equilibrium - Acrylic and Oil on Canvas, 140 x 160cm, 2025
If Intercepteur captures something in transit, an image or energy, what remains deliberately out of reach in your process? What do you allow to escape?
Nothings particularly out of reach within my practice, like mentioned earlier, focussed intuition has big role in the creation of my work. So, through this I allow it to transmute all the ideas and desired energies into a tangible, material object. I think most artists would agree that the act of creation is the perfect release, so if theres any escape its release.
The Mylar works are way more loose and gestural. They feel almost like tentative chalkboard drawings. They feel like a nice opposite or antidote to the thickly painted denser works on canvas. In some way they are more simple in execution, but more nuanced symbolically.
They focus more as a sort of close-up shot. Usually the hands and face are prominently shown and the hands are often gesturing in some sort of unintelligible coded language. The mylar film allows me to work on the front and the back of the surface and the smooth translucent properties have an element that reminds me of photographic film. The jagged white outlines of paint and chalk on top of backgrounds consisting of abstracted saturated washes of color read like a negative of a drawing. Having worked in photography for so long, the filmic quality feels like a nice reference materially.
Your work engages with the subconscious, dream states, and inner currents. Do you have specific practices or rituals that help you access these states?
I meditate everyday before I start to paint, just the act of bringing yourself back into yourself, puts you into a more clear state. With the desired outcome of my paintings I think its important that I engage on a clear, grounded mindset, I notice quite a big difference in the quality of my work when I meditate compared to when I dont. If I’ve meditated everything flows easier, the ideas come better and I enjoy the process more. There is literally no downside to meditation, it boosts every aspect of you in the most crucial way and dissipates any false illusions you have created for yourself. So I’ve found that if I want to make work that has a strong spiritual intent then I need to have a strong spiritual self behind it, otherwise its not going to have the catalystic impact I aim for it to have.
FIN