Arts + Literature Laboratory presents Slip, Spill, Fold: Changing Shapes of Meaning, an exhibition of recent work by Sylvie Rosenthal. The exhibition will be on view from November 12 through December 19, 2020.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the galleries will be open to the public for limited hours from 12-5pm Thursday through Saturday or by appointment. Visitors inside the building will be required to wear masks and practice social distancing, and the number of visitors will be limited according to current public health guidelines. Exhibition admission is free.
The exhibition will also be on view through the gallery windows on E. Main Street Thursday and Friday evenings.
A virtual artist talk with Sylvie Rosenthal (in lieu of a reception) will be announced here and on Facebook.
Artist Statement
Every object has its own histories and associations. Materials and forms, along with their attachments, make constellations that continually build, collapse, fold, overlap, and overflow. These meanings fold, spill, and slip through time. Originally, this work was made considering global trade and the things that come with it. How plant and biological material has traveled as gifts, specimens, and stowaways has greatly altered world ecology. The most striking example of this is the gold “Sputnik Gem” located within the work, Still Life as Oasis. “Sputnik Gem” is a riff on the decorative arts jewelry that commemorated the satellite with small precious pendants, built in large form, it represents its satellite namesake and the increasing speed of global communication. Now, it is also a COVID-19 virus particle. Sputnik translated is ‘fellow traveler’. The meaning of the work has expanded and transformed, adding a new layer of meaning to communication, with a particle invisible to the human eye.
The works are materially specific. Native white oak, exotic mahogany, native poplar, and basswoods gesture to the extraction economies that build American cities. The works speak to materials that have been used for domestic purposes in many cultures throughout history. A few of the pieces have a marbleized finish, connecting the entire work to the shallow depths of geologic and natural time. Ideas of preciousness and the exotic, along with the familiar banal pinned on globally traded materials, drove the expansion and the occupation of Indigenous land while also fueling the slave trade. (Madison, Art Lit Lab, and my house occupy Ho-Chunk Land.)
I look to science and alchemy, history, global trade, and possible futures to explore what makes a thing and thing, and the forces that operate below the crust of the visible yet play out in the physical world. The slippage, spills, and folds are a way to see and attempt to understand the heartbreaking potential of not only this world, but also of other possible worlds.
