PAUL ROUPHAIL | Date Paintings

Rolando Anselmi is pleased to present Date Paintings, the solo exhibition celebrating the conclusion of Paul Rouphail’s residency at Rolando Anselmi Upstairs. The show is composed by a series of five oil works created by the american artist Paul Rouphail during his five-week residency at the gallery’s space in Rome. Conceived as a visual diary, the series unfolds chronologically, with each painting titled by the date of its completion. This quiet yet evocative body of work reflects Rouphail’s ongoing exploration of the interior world, both physical and psychological, filtered through his temporary Roman surroundings. Inspired in part by the narrative rhythm of French New Wave cinema, particularly the films of Éric Rohmer and his recurring use of calendars as thematic anchors, the exhibition presents an ensemble of domestic interiors and still lifes that speak subtly to the passage of time. Among the recurring motifs: brass paperweights, windows, books, and fragments of calendar dates rendered in cream-colored sans-serif lettering. A focal point in several works is The Loser, the novel by Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard. Its cover, specifically the English-language edition, appears prominently in May 1, reproduced with photorealistic precision. In April 23, a small brass deer perches atop the same book, its title clearly visible beneath. These objects act as narrative anchors, recurring emblems of time, memory, and literary association. In other paintings, the artist integrates glimpses of the Roman landscape, urban vignettes, architectural details, and textual fragments from italian masters such as Leonardo da Vinci and Tiziano. These borrowed moments resonate alongside familiar elements from the artist’s own home in Philadelphia, blending past and present, proximity and distance, into a compact visual lexicon. Through these paintings, Rouphail proposes a meditation on the experience of place, foreign yet intimate, as something composed of fragmentary perceptions: what one sees, reads, and remembers. Each canvas becomes a marker of time, like a page in a book or a timestamp in a film. Rather than narrate a linear story, the artist assembles a constellation of impressions, quiet, deliberate, and deeply personal.