Holland Tunnel Gallery is pleased to present works by the late French artist Jacques Roch.

Jacques Roch was born in Lyons, France in 1934. He moved to Paris to study at the Beaux-Arts and then went on to produce a series of alternative comic strips in the 1970’s for Charlie Magazine and other notable publications.

He moved to New York in 1979 where he returned to painting and exhibited in several galleries in NYC including Exit Art and Kim Foster, as well as Sideshow and Holland Tunnel in Williamsburg, NY.

Esperanza features a selection of small format paintings and drawings from several decades, curated by Antony Roch and Paulien Lethen.

“I was born with the condition of the wide-awake dreamer,” Roche wrote.” I can still feel the wind blowing at the temples of my sixteenth year at a time when I was living on the back of a camel, crossing long stretches of bumpy desert road in search of a well that doesn’t go dry. Painting was my love, but one day I had reluctantly to dismount, as we were in Algeria where there was a war going on with the French army and I was a draftable young Frenchman.”

He was able to resume painting after his military obligations were fulfilled, embracing the Situationist movement of Paris in the 1960s.

He was energized by his 1979 move to New York City.

“The intensity and diversity of the street life and the culture of graffiti were new influences for me,” he wrote. “and I responded in my paintings by developing a world of line drawn characters playing out their inner psychic tensions on a ground of luscious abstractions.”

Opening reception is Saturday, Dec. 1, 3-6 p.m. The exhibit will be on display through Feb. 17

The Holland Tunnel Gallery is located at 46 Chambers Street, between Broadway and First Street, Newburgh. Hours are Saturday and Sunday, 1-5 p.m., except holidays.