Volf Roitman - Between Florida and West Cork (1998- )

Between Florida and West Cork (1998- )

Since 1998, Roitman works out of studios in Tampa, Florida and West Cork, Ireland. In November 1999, he presented a solo show at the Sarasota Visual Art Center, about which the renowned art critic Marcia Corbino wrote: “The Sarasota Visual Art center has mounted a MADI festival which may earn the Arts Center a niche in the history of 20th century art.” One month later, Roitman unveiled a large metal wall relief commissioned by the Palmer Foundation of Houston, for the north wall of the Sarasota Center. Roitman originated and helped to organize the first North American exhibition exclusively devoted to MADI: “Outside the Box: Eleven International MADI Artists Featuring Carmelo Arden Quin and Volf Roitman From the Masterson and The Lenherr Collections,” shown at the Polk Museum in Lakeland, Florida from August to October 2001 and at the Gulf Coast Museum in Largo, Florida, from November to January, 2002.

Starting in January 2002, he created the entrance facade of the MADI Museum and was named its Artistic Director. The Museum and Gallery in the Uptown quarter of Dallas was inaugurated on 22 February 2003. The building’s two principal facades were completely transformed by two-store high sculptural works specially created by Roitman during a fifteen-month period – asymmetrical pieces of the bright colors, drenched in ludic or whimsical cuts and folds and bolted to a mirrored background. This lightning bolt transformation of a pedestrian office building into a sculptural work is considered by Roitman to be the culmination of his own life devoted entirely to the arts. For the Museum’s opening exhibition, a cornucopia of Roitman works was also on show – a mechanized moving tower, an explanatory mechanized sculpture entitled “What Is MADI?”, a wall of metal and Plexiglas “portholes,” his abstract and stylized version of “the Movies,” and other important pieces. Roitman also designed the museum’s interior, including the transformation of an interior wall of the building’s great hall into a unique sculptural piece of color and metal decoupages.

From 9 November 2002 to 5 January 2003 “Heart and Mind – The Art of Volf Roitman,” featured at the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art in Tarpon Springs, Florida. From July 9 to August 20, 2006, The Leepa-Rattner Museum presented “The Moving MADI World of Volf Roitman.” “The Roitman Gallery provides the real playground” (Lennie Bennet in the St. Petersburg Times of 9 July 2006.)