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    • 2020
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    • 2013
    • 2012
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  • performance
    • collaboration
    • process painting
  • mixed media
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SARA ROSENTHAL

Artist Statement

“The present is what assembles and gathers together. Between past and future, a space free but laid out by the soul, the spirit, or the heart must be safeguarded where the advent of the encounter can take place." -Luce Irigaray

​How do we witness the world around us? How do we witness ourselves? Can art change the way we interact, simply by seeing it? 

Drawing my practice out from these questions, I am interested to explore invisible architectures- the subtle tensions and connections of everyday movements that convey the semiotics of relationship.
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Grounded in the geometries of ritual, my work engages with our lived experience of time- how time affects the architecture of our lives and our environments. Often durational, my practice allows for inherent flux as the audience is invited to enter, leave, and return to the space of painting/ installation/ performance- a space that becomes a visible, material expression of the underlying spirit of time and place  which the viewer can slip into and out of. In this way, the viewer has empowered agency and choice, just as the artist does- and in the choice to watch, and to connect, the viewer enacts their own personal narrative, participating by witnessing, creating a new space of dialogue, a new way of language. 
 
My process begins with research: reading and absorbing specific thematic atmospheres I seek to express through deep observation of people and place. According to each chosen theme, I study a wide range of intellectual sources: from obscure archaic poetry and dense critical theory to the daily news. In this process of devising I take time to experiment, sketch, journal, and play, exploring material choices. With feedback, I then hone the most significant elements of the piece, while still allowing space for uncertainty and spontaneous creation. I like to let randomness and chance influence the direction a project will go, inviting the world into my artistic process as the work I create reflects out through it. Always expanding the breadth of my practice, I am consistently curious and rigorous in my approach, uncovering surprising connections and encountering unforeseen illuminations. 



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