Christian Rex van Minnen was born in Providence, RI in 1980 and received his BA from Regis University, Denver in 2002. He has exhibited throughout the US and internationally and is represented by NANZUKA, Tokyo and VETA Galeria, Madrid.

Your work draws from Renaissance oil painting techniques while injecting 21st-century absurdity. What fascinates you about merging classical precision with grotesque and surreal imagery?

I don’t think oil painting gets any better than 16th & 17th century Dutch and Spanish painting! I am a student of that era and what they could do with this magical substance, the ‘special effects’ of oil. I like to deploy all of this technique and strategy but without too much of a plan, letting the painting and its content come together organically, encouraging weird unpredictability as I go.

The layered tattoos in your portraits suggest a retreat into digital culture, memes, and conspiracy theories. How do you see these elements shaping our collective psyche, and what compels you to explore them?

I really love the cumulative effect of layering, like lines over shapes, new tattoos over old ones, a pattern over a 3d shape, etc. It is THE thing I like to see. Artists of the Renaissance and Baroque and forever have always hidden things in paintings, whether the esoteric and heretical or just a dirty joke and, I like that, and a lot of the time I’m just referencing that as a thing painters do. What I love about the layering approach to painting is that I get all these opportunities to develop layers of meaning within forms and also a way of showing the passage of time. The surface ‘skin’ of this larger, living thing records these fleeting marks, words, and symbols as a kind of proof of life and its passage. 



Your paintings exist in a tension between the hyper-real and the nonsensical beauty and horror. Do you see your work as a mirror reflecting human nature, or is it more of a personal catharsis?  



Wow, that’s a hard question. I think it’s probably more in the ‘personal catharsis’ camp than me trying to deliver some didactic knowledge or clever insight of some sort. I do believe that we, as souls, are here to expand our consciousness and grow our hearts, and painting continues to serve me in that way. The paintings are evidence of that insane and embarrassing mess.



You have a unique painting process. How does your process of layering abstract brushstrokes help you channel your subconscious onto the canvas?



The root of it is automatic drawing for sure, fundamental surrealism. Drag a wiggle or mark through all the layers and fixin’s, and it will have ‘believability’ and that is a lot of fun and always interesting as a process of self-revelation. Also, it requires very little prep work, which I like. It’s very action-oriented. Each layer is an opportunity to tell a linear story in a single point, and often, I’m not the same person, like emotionally, who painted the last layer, so you get this really crazy potential of dissonance. Layers of personality and days and change have this ultimate cumulative effect that reveals something true for me.

Your work has been compared to Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, a painting once used to warn of indulgence and damnation. Do you see your art as a modern allegory, or is it something more chaotic and open-ended?  

Yeah, probably the latter. I am definitely not identifying myself as the moral or intellectual high ground haha. I’m usually honest with myself though and follow the thread that I really find exciting and electric. I think of David Lynch as my role model there, as an artist that was full-throttle zero fucks given fully true to himself, and also not preachy or moralistic, or malicious for that matter. There is so much love in my heart, and I want the best of us. 



Your paintings feature everything from mutant bodies to jelly candies and rainbows. What role does humor play in your work, and how do you balance playfulness with darker themes?  



I have to see these images that can contain and organize it all, or at least try to. All the pain and grief and fun and love, fear and hope and bleakness and fecundity and memes and the transcendental and puerile. I need to see that all together. Nothing should be exiled.



You’ve experimented with three-dimensional works and monotyping. What drives you to expand beyond traditional oil painting, and how do these different mediums shift the way you express your ideas?

I love to make things in all mediums, I’m always making or doing something new, and it is all a damn distraction from the big show. I’m always getting wrapped up in some project and then falling on my face and retreating back to painting. Learning to stay in my lane maybe. I can see now at 45 how artists end up just totally isolated and cynical and tragically obsessed with painting lol.



Can you tell us about your upcoming shows and fairs?

In March, I am doing ART FAIR TOKYO with AISHO, TEFAF Maastricht with VETA by Fer Francés, and Art Basel Hong Kong with NANZUKA. In October, I will be returning to Tokyo for my second solo show with NANZUKA.