Our human impulse to categorize and accumulate is a central theme of a strong physique of labor by Claire Rosen. For greater than a decade, Rosen has sought out chattering macaws, cockatoos with fluffy, blush-colored plumage, and ornery owls, which she pairs with patterned papers and textiles.
An African penguin, for instance, stares curiously at its pink-and-white striped environment, whereas a Woman Amherst’s pheasant trots throughout ornate brocade. The ensuing portraits are meditations on notions of magnificence and the connection between nature and tradition, significantly as we’ve reproduced imagery of the previous all through centuries of artwork and design.
Rosen is attuned with this enduring custom, sharing in an announcement concerning the assortment:
The partitions of the imperial villas of Historic Rome have been adorned with frescoes detailing wealthy wildlife. Throughout the Renaissance, Rafael reinvented this historic model by his grotesques, which depict birds, fruits, and flora. Fastidiously crafted representations of the pure world have been re- imagined but once more in Nineteenth-century Britain when William Morris started producing richly ornamented wallpaper that includes wild birds and vegetation.
Deciding on a backdrop for a specific creature prompts a spread of issues, and Rosen tries to “induce magnificence, optical phantasm and visible mixing, (so) the birds seem to belong when in actuality it’s a far cry from their pure atmosphere.” The placing portraits mirror our ongoing fascination with possessing what captivates us.
Workshop Arts will publish a set of Rosen’s portraits and essays, along with texts by students, in a e book this fall. Discover extra from the collection on her web site and Instagram.
