Towel Stairs (Don’t say I never made a towel stairs)

towel.jpg

Slide two of this post is me talking about why I made the towel stairs very late in the evening. An artist statement of sorts!

Documentation of the work bench.

Solo show at Essex Flowers, New York, NY. Oct 8 - Nov 6, 2021.

Don’t say I never made a towel stairs. //
Towel stairs. 2019. Towel, fabric sculpting medium, cement. 1 x 2 x 1/2 ft.

Towel Stairs was part of my solo show exhibit November 2021.

https://essexflowers.us/KATYA-ROZANOVA

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.

Hands: Various Projects

Holding On, Sitting Hands

Reusable latex loves, clay, aluminum chair.

Folded Hands (2022)

Reusable latex gloves, earth dug up by Ro, string. Dimensions variable (about 3 x 2 ft / 1 sq meter). 2022.

 

Computer Mouse Conference (2019)

I was thrilled to be invited to create a work for the first Computer Mouse Conference put together by Ashley Jane Lewis and Emma Rae Bruml Norton.

I created a wearable mouse made of a glove filled with sand and lead weights to simulate a heavy therapy blanket or the comfort of a human hand. In this simple work I process the frustrations of the oft cold, lonely, laborious cyberspace we inherited as well as the occasional togetherness that can be found in and around it.

This conference included a group show and discussion panel about humans and tech and all the poetic, tragic, absurd, and concerning things that can transpire and be observed in this space. Topics ranged from an analysis of the anthropology of the office to visions of humanoid and collaborative computer mice.

Below is Allan Wexler using a brick mouse🧱to build a wall in the virtual space, which is, in part, what inspired this project.

 

Resting before and after work (2019)

Latex glove, water, chair made of wire. 10 x 10 cm.

Speakers

Sculptures made from paper pulp connected through speaker wire sit on chairs facing each other and the viewer. The use of speaker wires and the title bring to mind a set of speakers used to amplify sound. However, rather than transmitting messages to an external audience, the objects are linked solely to each other, seemingly generating meaning and exchanging ideas independently. Mimicking a conversation, they suggest or model animate, self-directed behavior. In this work the artist blurs the boundaries between object and person, provoking questions about human entanglements and modes of connection or touch.