Final Verdict: โ โ โ โ ยฝ (4.5/5)
A riven, resonant ruptureโ”IX/XI” is Leon Aarts’ Guernica for twins, his Kiefer on Kiwi soil, cracking global grief into local lines with unflinching fusion. Less whimsical than Invitation, less declarative than I AM, but deeper in its divideโart as aftershock. For survivors, seismologists of the soul, or scar-bearers, it’s a tenacious testament; this isn’t faces crackedโit’s the crack that births the face.
“The towers fell. The earth split. The faces stared from the cleftโand the red whispered: remember the break.”
his acrylic painting, “IX/XI” (2011) by Leon Aarts (b. 1961, Christchurch, New Zealand), is a seared, splintered requiemโa horizontal frieze of fractured faces and totemic forms emerging from a blue-black abyss, cracked open by red gashes and yellow flares like wounds under interrogation lights, the title’s Roman numerals evoking September 11’s raw scar while Aarts’ cracked-earth aesthetic mirrors his hometown’s 2011 quake wounds. Created in the immediate aftermath of Christchurch’s February 22 earthquake (6.3 magnitude, 185 dead, CBD gutted), this panoramic mid-scale canvas (approx. 48ร18 inches) fuses global atrocity with local trauma into a Whatdoesitmean dirge: What cracks remain when the towers fall, the ground splits, and the faces fracture?