Rose Marcus | Fountains

In her second solo exhibition at David Petersen Gallery, Rose Marcus will present a collection of new photo-based works of heterogeneous subject matter indicative of her self-reflexive yet indeterminate oeuvre. Here, the exhibition’s images include positive and negative prints of blood, obscured construction workers, the foil interior of a potato chip bag, and prior work unearthed, staged and rephotographed. Unlike her past imagery taken in public space of public experience, e.g. tourists in Central Park, Marcus departs from iconic sites to intimate and interior worlds.

Additionally, Marcus’s new work raises questions about photography’s relationships and reciprocities with drawing, painting, performance and sculpture. As such, her work eludes easy categorization, as the images often contain interventions with assorted materials and methods. This includes layering and collaging, or cutting and removal; draping, obscuring, and over/ under exposing; framing, isolating, interacting with subjects. By conflating and compounding photography’s enigmatic form and function, Marcus enhances the work’s visual allusions, questions, and interpretations. Additionally, these works delve further into the complexities of photography’s role in art as a functional instrument of documentation and the decisive, romantic moment of aesthetics.

Installed in the gallery, the works are autonomous but interconnected. The potential links between them - the imagery, materials, gestures, proximities - can be read as visually poetic, obliquely political. If anything is constant, or elemental, it is that these works can be viewed through an artist’s lens that is of a constant observer. Whether individually or installed as an exhibition, Marcus’s work continues to be endlessly curious and probing while expanding the possibilities of how a photograph is understood.

About the Artist

Rose Marcus (b. Atlanta, GA, 1982) lives in New York. She received a BFA from Pratt Institute in New York and an MA in Art History at Hunter College, also in New York. Marcus’s solo exhibitions include Night Gallery (Los Angeles); Mary Mary (Glasgow); Know More Games (New York); Eli Ping (New York); David Petersen Gallery (Minneapolis); and And Now (Dallas). Her solo art fair presentations include Material Mexico City, Frieze London, and Paris Internationale. Her work has shown in two-person exhibitions at Atlanta Contemporary (Atlanta); Parisian Laundry (Montreal); La Kaje (Brooklyn); as well as notable group exhibitions at Modern Institute (Glasgow); Tanya Leighton (Berlin); Sies and Höke (Dusseldorf); Simon Lee Gallery (New York); and CANADA (New York), and was included in the 2016 exhibition, In the Abstract, at MaSS MoCa (North Adams). In addition to her exhibition with David Petersen, Rose has forthcoming solo exhibitions with Night Gallery (Los Angeles, ‘23), and Derosia (NYC, ‘24).

Gallery Hours

Thu-Sat 12-6pm 

Image: Rose Marcus, Poster, 2022

This exhibition is proudly part of TC Arts week October 12-16, 2022. Learn More.