KATYA ROZANOVA
Important Structures Upheld
October 8 - November 6, 2021
Opening Reception: Tuesday, October 5, 6-8pm
October 8 - November 6, 2021
Opening Reception: Tuesday, October 5, 6-8pm
Intersection of coffee table and labor. 2020. Found glass, wire, plaster, cotton. 1 x 3 ft. US 8 / EU 38.5.
This body of work, Important Structures Upheld, is a humorous meditation on power structures that society often deems immutable and aims to maintain at all costs. Essential-for-survival everyday objects, such as cheap white towels and socks from a bodega, found industrial building materials such as rocks, latex gloves, glass, rods, lashing straps and basic fruits like bananas and oranges arranged in unlikely and precarious structures. These assemblages gesture towards holding up or attempting to reach something that may be unreachable, absent, dangerous, or simply not worth the effort.
The quintessential socks and latex gloves, filled with sand and cement, serve as stand-ins for full bodies, for groups of people carrying, lifting, propping, and working together toward some end. These not-quite-realistic, slapstick style, stuffed feet and hands "at work" evoke the dark humor of seeing vulnerable and soft beings propping up or intending to walk up structures that are either too heavy, unstable, or heartbreakingly perilous.
The work may serve, in part, as a modern-day, abstracted allegory of our foolhardy "achievements," our gullibility, and tragic tendency to misplace our efforts. And, on the other hand, our uplifting ability to work together to survive and to find joy in cooperation, in contact with one another, even while oppressed, neglected, or massively bamboozled.
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Katya Rozanova is an artist, designer, learner, and educator based in Brooklyn.
Her work examines what is and gestures towards what can be by calling on the social imagination through irreverent combinations of sculptural and everyday materials, sound art, and group workshops, often with a sense of humor.
Katya enjoys collaborating, learning, and teaching in cooperative structures, and her work often explores themes found in such collaborations.
The quintessential socks and latex gloves, filled with sand and cement, serve as stand-ins for full bodies, for groups of people carrying, lifting, propping, and working together toward some end. These not-quite-realistic, slapstick style, stuffed feet and hands "at work" evoke the dark humor of seeing vulnerable and soft beings propping up or intending to walk up structures that are either too heavy, unstable, or heartbreakingly perilous.
The work may serve, in part, as a modern-day, abstracted allegory of our foolhardy "achievements," our gullibility, and tragic tendency to misplace our efforts. And, on the other hand, our uplifting ability to work together to survive and to find joy in cooperation, in contact with one another, even while oppressed, neglected, or massively bamboozled.
--
Katya Rozanova is an artist, designer, learner, and educator based in Brooklyn.
Her work examines what is and gestures towards what can be by calling on the social imagination through irreverent combinations of sculptural and everyday materials, sound art, and group workshops, often with a sense of humor.
Katya enjoys collaborating, learning, and teaching in cooperative structures, and her work often explores themes found in such collaborations.
Intersection of coffee table and labor. 2020. Found glass, wire, plaster, cotton. 1 x 3 ft. US 8 / EU 38.5.
important structures upheld. 2018. Fruits, rocks, metal. 4 x 3 x 1 ft.
Towel Stairs (Don’t say I never made a towel stairs). 2019. Towel, fabric sculpting medium, cement. 1 x 2 x 1/2 ft.