Heather Rowe’s sculptures can initially resemble architectural structures. Sharp planes activate negative and positive space, glass and mirror create disorienting effects, and screw holes, scuffs, and pencil marks leave traces of the history of construction. These built-up works emphasize interiority and exteriority, light, space and materiality to generate formal and metaphorical situations, actively involving the viewer.

For this exhibition Rowe presents a new large-scale installation, the latest in a series of works that explore the multiple natures of a “screen” as it might exist within a domestic setting. Bisecting the gallery in a series of accordion-shaped screens, the work investigates how architecture can affect the body’s relationship to space, frustrating viewpoints and blocking movement. Using a mix of new and found components, formal elements of the sculpture amplify a fluctuating anxiety. Unfinished plywood and fragments of textured wallpaper recall interrupted interior rooms or theater sets. Heavy glass mounted into light frames seems fragile and challenges the work’s stability. The window frames suggest movement and rotation, but they are frozen.

Through particularity of material and compositional framework, Rowe enacts a cinematic experience for the viewer. In this installation, the orange and red hues of the interior wallpapered sections of plywood are connected to Alfred Hitchcock's film Marnie, where the director used a red overlay on the screen to signify a triggered memory of a repressed traumatic event. Rowe’s use of color highlights architecture and its decorative components’ ability to be emotional in themselves, as well as catalysts for eliciting memories that are forgotten, painful, pleasant or nostalgic.

About the artist:

Heather Rowe (b. 1970, United States) received her MFA from Columbia University. She has exhibited in numerous museums and galleries including MoMA PS1, New York; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana; University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI; The Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK; Socrates Sculpture Park, New York; Ballroom Marfa, Texas; White Columns, New York; Artist Space, New York; and in 2008 she was featured in the Whitney Biennial. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

-Gallery Wendi Norris

Image: © Heather Rowe
Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Wendi Norris