Blood sausage 2008

Curator: Alexander Roitburd's 2008 artwork, "Blood Sausage," executed in acrylic paint with a matter-painting technique, presents a fascinating study in texture and tone. What are your initial impressions? Editor: Immediately, I’m struck by the impasto – that thick, almost sculptural application of paint. The color palette is predominantly deep red-brown, punctuated by off-white and pale brown shapes. It gives off a sense of dense, earthy weightiness. Curator: Roitburd’s titles often carry a symbolic weight, layering meaning onto his abstract forms. Consider “Blood Sausage.” Sausages, particularly blood sausage, are deeply ingrained in cultural memory, often associated with feasting, tradition, and even sacrifice. Editor: I see it! There’s an almost repulsive yet captivating quality. The amorphous blobs do suggest organic matter, and the color, of course, amplifies that sensation. Formally, I’m interested in how the white shapes act as compositional anchors against the dark background. They draw the eye around the canvas. Curator: And what do you make of the textures themselves? They evoke something beyond the culinary. Roitburd frequently incorporated elements of decay, referencing fleeting mortality. There’s a sense of transformation. Editor: The impasto definitely enhances that feeling. It’s as if the painting itself is in a state of flux, both solid and fluid. It subverts any sense of clarity or easy definition, refusing a clean reading of the “forms”. Curator: Roitburd explored themes of cultural and national identity in much of his art, particularly his Ukranian heritage. Perhaps here, “Blood Sausage” acts as a kind of brutal metaphor. What resonates as a culinary and cultural item is subverted and corrupted. Editor: Absolutely. It becomes this sort of embodied cultural artifact, almost repulsive. Thinking of it through the lens of formal tensions, it offers a really disturbing, and I would argue, powerfully evocative visual experience. Curator: Exploring the symbolic richness of the title, and through consideration of this dense physicality, the painting comes to embody and transform collective anxieties around life and decay. Editor: For me, focusing on how these colors and shapes interact emphasizes that tension, how beauty and disgust can be found coexisting in a single piece.