Two NY area exhibitions feature works by Trix Rosen.
VISAURAL
NAVE Gallery Annex, 53 Chester St., Somerville, MA 02144
October 8th – 31st 2015
Pigment print on aluminum with hand-filed edges
12 x 18 inches
Song: Hallelujah
Rosen photographed the graffiti drawing Who do You Believe In on a cell wall of the Women’s Wing at the abandoned Essex County State Penitentiary, in North Caldwell, NJ. Both the text and the inmate’s haunting, hand-drawn portrait poignantly illustrate one of the fundamental questions we ask about life.
For the exhibition, VISAURAL, Rosen paired it with “Hallelujah,” written by Leonard Cohen and performed here by K.D. Lang, because the prayer-like music affirms a faith in life and love amidst doubts. Cohen has said the iconic song represents “absolute surrender in a situation you cannot fix or dominate.”
Alone, within the steel bars of her cage-like cell, Rosen imagines the figure in the drawing listening to the repeated one-word chorus coming through the open ceiling above her. According to the song, even those of us for whom “it all went wrong” can experience transcendence. As Cohen writes: we “stand before the Lord of Song/ with nothing on [our] lips but a cold and broken Hallelujah.”
__________________________________________________
Art in the Public Eye: What’s All The Fuss?
Pierro Gallery of South Orange
The Baird, 5 Mead St, South Orange NJ
October 29 – November 25, 2015
Opening Reception October 29, 7-9 pm
Panel Discussion November 19, 7 pm
Statement by the artist
“From the earliest days of my career in art and photography I have photographed strong and defiant people who bravely break taboos and re-define their cultural and sexual representation. Many of my images embrace the fluidity of gender identity and explore the possibility that we each hold a myriad of alternative selves within us.
Dean, the photojournalist and visual artist depicted in the portrait, ’Authentic Gender Queer,’ (2014) self-identifies with the pronoun “they,” and says: “There is nothing more courageous than being yourself in a world that tries to render you invisible in mundane and violent ways.”
The provocative pose of Fred Koenig, the gender fluid performance artist in “Sacred Corset,” who can so naturally appear both handsome and beautiful, dares the viewer to cross over boundaries of imagination and desire.”
