Sculpture + Extended Media presents a visiting artist lecture by
Em Rooney
Wednesday, February 4 at 10 AM
Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University
601 W Broad St, Richmond, VA 23220
Em Rooney (b. 1983, U.S.) lives and works in Canaan, CT. Rooney’s multimedia practice is anchored in a study of film, photography, and the material indices of these seemingly ephemeral, auratic genres. In the artist’s earlier work, analog methods of photography were paired with sculptural framing devices. Using steel brackets, leaded crystal enclosures, pewter embellishments, and other heavy, industrial materials that engage tactility and imply a substantive weight to their contents, these works reinforce the photographic image’s material presence, as pictures grow increasingly untethered from authorship and origin in the digital era. Rooney’s images focus on the experiences of women and girls, her style deliberately pedestrian yet narratively opaque, indicating everyday mystery. As Rooney’s sculptural objects have increased in scale in recent years, so have they developed a formal autonomy from photography, while maintaining a conceptual link to film: costume design, filmic ephemera, and the portrayal of women onscreen inform the artist’s structural and material techniques, many of which are improvised in her studio and original to her practice. Based on botanical forms, or, most recently, the eclosion cycle of butterflies, Rooney’s sculpture continues to allude to the dichotomy between seen and unseen, as it is uniquely experienced by women.
Recent solo exhibitions include Peana Gallery, Mexico City (2023); Derosia (2022); François Ghebaly, Los Angeles (2020-2021); Fons Welters, Amsterdam (2019); Bodega, New York (2018 & 2016); and Beeler Gallery at The Columbus College of Art and Design, Columbus, OH (2016).
Recent group exhibitions include Jack Barrett Gallery, New York City,(2023) , New England Triennial, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA, Manual (2022) , im labor, Tokyo, Japan; Office Baroque, Antwerp, Belgium, White Columns, New York, NY, Kristina Kite Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, No Gallery, New York, NY, There Will Come Soft Rains, Gallery Candace Madey, New York, NY (2021), François Ghebaly, Los Angeles (2019); Kaviar Factory, Henningsvaer, Norway (2019); Adams & Ollman, Portland, OR (2019); Galerie Crèvecoeur, Paris (2018); Foxy Production, New York (2018), The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2018); Document, Chicago (2018); and Simone Subal (2017).
Their work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Frieze, Artforum, Aperture Magazine, i-D, Art in America, and Artnews, among others.
