Film & Video (Film & Video)

In the 2013 video work, Sitting Feeding Sleeping , Rose combines footage taken of zoo animals living in captivity with screen images that flicker and flash before us. In the narration, Rose talks about forms of life that are suspended and simulated—artificial intelligence and cryogenically frozen bodies, zoo animals and counterfeit ecologies. Through this montage of different types of footage and text, Rose poses us between the natural and the artificial, and speaks to the very strange moment of life in a world that is seemingly caught between the two, existing in a hybrid (though not necessarily symbiotic) moment of radical change.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

A minute Ago starts with a hailstorm pelting down unexpectedly on a quiet beach in Siberia. People, half naked, run for cover under towels and parasols, to the music of the Pink Floyd. The next scene is an interview of Philip Johnson, filmed 10 years before in the Glass House he constructed.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

First Born by Rachel Rose is part of a series of works titled Borns which expands on the artist’s longstanding interest in the organic shape of eggs. For this sculpture made of rock and glass the artist has created a milky glass-blown shape, almost like fabric in its form, which is draped over a metallic rock in the shape of an egg. For the artist, the egg is an alchemical symbol that is representative of conception and birth.

Rachel E. Foster uses printmaking, sculpture, and photography to illuminate the nearly invisible. For her source material she combs the digital world for bits of strange information that seep into our daily reality. These clues, be they coded sequences or simple phrases, become part of her puzzle; by reframing information she makes us reconsider it through a different lens.

Photography (Photography)

“Maqe II” is at first glance a romantic image of three diaphanous angels hovering in the luminous sky over a South African township. A closer inspection reveals that the apparition is the appropriated figure of Marie Antoinette from the artist’s Ciao Bella series (2001) with the addition of a butchered cake. The figure is Rose herself dressed in costumed made of trash bags holding a haunting paper mâché mask.

Photography (Photography)

In Are You Lonely Mr. Claus? , a bottle of whiskey, a red rose, a lit cigarette, and an assembly of kitschy Christmas memorabilia (Santa’s hat, a sugar cane) are displayed side-by-side with artifacts that denote some sort of (typically Californian?) summer leisure time (sea shells, sun block and goggles).

Painting (Painting)

Bread and Roses takes its name from a phrase famously used on picket signs and immortalized by the poet James Oppenheim in 1911. “Bread for all, and Roses, too’—a slogan of the women in the West,” is Oppenheim’s opening line, alluding to the workers’ goal for wages and conditions that would allow them to do more than simply survive. Thomas’ painting includes several black, white, brown, yellow, and red raised fists—clenched and high in the air in the internationally recognized symbol of solidarity, resistance, and unity.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The Fourth Notebook features a solo choreography by dancer Benjamin Ord. In an empty dance studio, Ord begins seated on his knees on the floor. He moves subtly with gentle strokes to the rhythm of a woman’s voice speaking short phrases in French.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Imjingawa is Hwayeon Nam’s first foray into borrowing from the documentary form. The root of the work is a Japanese song with Korean diasporic connotations, which the artist heard inadvertently years ago. While tracking the inception and history of the song, her research explored the song’s potential to live beyond “legal, national, ideological, and geographical barriers.” The song earned its fame when it was introduced to the Japanese band, the Folk Crusaders.