Meredith Rose
The Chelsea International Fine Art Competition Exhibition
August 24 - September 12, 2012
Reception:
Thursday August 30, 2012 6-8 PM
Press Release
Meredith Rose’s assemblages bring together paper cut-outs, clothes, drawings and found trinkets to create shrunken monuments to personal history and the handmade spirit of folk art. Rose, an American artist, explores an object’s power of suggestion: the unfinished narrative that two juxtaposed toys can conjure, the mystery of a used garment, or the sheer beauty of an unusual tool.
Miniaturized and sealed in wood and Lucite, but still enticingly tactile, Rose’s boxes use time, size and texture as material. The result is an entire living world set in suspended animation.
Artist Statement
My goal is to create small, three-dimensional, self-contained worlds inside wooden or plexiglass boxes. I incorporate material from magazines, photo albums, the internet, thrift shops, the streets. I often use mirrors to multiply and fracture images within my boxes.
Sometimes I make a piece because the material itself (a face, an item in a hardware store) fascinates me. Other times I’m inspired by an event (such as the financial crisis, reading a book on mythology, the death of a friend). Although my work is usually conceptual, I try to provide enough visual interest so that those with different interpretations will still find it worth looking at.
One of the strongest memories from my early childhood is of an egg I received at Easter. It was about four inches long and covered with pink sugary icing, but if you looked through a cellophane opening you would see a village complete with trees, houses, and bunnies dancing along the streets. I was amazed that a whole world could be contained in such a tiny object. Many years later, I saw a box by Joseph Cornell, and knew I wanted to work in that medium. The result is a series of works which represent an idea, often family relationships or cultural phenomena, or embody a mystery.
Invitation to the exhibition
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View the catalog page
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Artists in this exhibition
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