Annabeth Rosen: Fired, Broken, Gathered, Heaped

Annabeth Rosen: Fired, Broken, Gathered, Heaped
August 19–November 26, 2017
Opening: August 18, 6:30–9pm

Annabeth Rosen: Fired, Broken, Gathered, Heaped is the first major survey of the artist's work and covers over more than two decades of her practice. The exhibition will feature the arc of Rosen's ceramic sculptures as well as drawings that mirror the trajectory of these works.

For over 20 years, Annabeth Rosen has interrogated the place of craft in the contemporary art landscape. Formally trained in ceramics yet heavily influenced by painting, Rosen has molded her practice around conceptually-driven sculptural forms. While Rosen’s earlier works engaged first traditional ceramic forms conjuring landscape and nature, her more recent works push past ideas of representations of the physical realm and into dialogues around material performance and endurance.

Exploring the temporal nature of ceramics, Rosen melds the performative into both material and process. Composed through laborious, additive techniques, she pushes the medium beyond spectacle and into conversations about endurance-based performance, feminist thought, contemporary painting, and conceptual art. The artist rarely attempts to obscure her hand as a primary instrument and often “binds” multitudes of discrete works to create multifarious objects, sometimes diminutive and occasionally monumental.

Rosen sees both her studio and the kiln as spaces of invention. She embraces process and chance as essential elements in the formation of her art objects. Rosen has said of her work, “I break almost as much ceramics as I make, and I think I learn as much about the work by doing so. By being so focused on a destination for the piece, I overlook shapes and ideas. Much of the work is made with already fired parts broken, reassembled, reglazed and re-fired with the addition of wet clay elements if necessary. I work with a hammer and chisel, and I think of the fired pieces as being as fluid and malleable as wet clay.”

Celebrated as an artist’s artist, Rosen is a pioneer in contemporary ceramics, bringing fluidity to the genre and its discourse with contemporary art. Within the genre’s trajectory, Rosen functions as an important link between such artists as Peter Voulkos, Jun Kaneko, Mary Heilmann, Lynda Benglis, and a new generation of artists working in the medium.

About the artist
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Annabeth Rosen received her BFA from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University and her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. After graduate school, Rosen taught at School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Rhode Island School of Design, Tyler School of Art, and Bennington College. She has also participated in residencies at the Bemis Center For Contemporary Arts (Omaha, NE); Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts (Newcastle, ME); The Fabric Workshop and Museum (Philadelphia, PA) and the Borowsky Center for Publication Arts (Philadelphia, PA). Rosen presently teaches at University of California Davis, holding the Robert Arneson Endowed Chair in Ceramic Sculpture. Rosen has received multiple grants and awards, including a Pew Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a number of UC Davis Research Grants, and most recently a Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Award. Rosen’s work is in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, CA), Oakland Museum of California (Oakland, CA), Denver Art Museum (Denver, CO), and Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, NY), as well as in numerous public and private collections. Rosen shows her work with Gallery Paule Anglim (San Francisco, CA). Rosen’s work has been exhibited around the world, including venues in Taipei, Taiwan; Kyoto, Japan; Seoul, Korea; Mallorca, Spain; London, England; and Glasgow, Scotland.

Publication
A significant monograph published by Lucia|Marquand accompanies Annabeth Rosen: Fired, Broken, Gathered, Heaped. The publication includes an essay by organizing curator Valerie Cassel Oliver, as well as contributions by Nancy Princenthal and Jenni Sorkin. The monograph also features color images of the artist’s works and a chronology of the artist’s life and work. The overall scope and comprehensive material featured in the accompanying catalogue promises to serve as a scholarly reader and a critical and lasting document for the exhibition.