Broken Self
27 February – 27 March, 2010

Exhibition

Opening Saturday, February 27th, 6-8pm

There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons—
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes—

-Emily Dickinson

Spencer Brownstone is pleased to present a tandem exhibition featuring the work of Tara Sinn and Rafaël Rozendaal.
Winter is a time marked by hostile weather and driven by extremes. Functioning as an immersive environment, this exhibition descends into a realm where the altered psychological state of winter operates as the norm, -the artworks simultaneously reveling and reviling in conflicting symptoms of indulgence and depravation, anxiety and detachment, mania and depression.
A full-fledged participatory installation, Rafaël Rozendaal’s Broken Self was also originally concocted for the Internet (brokenself.com). Using a minimal approach, the site consists of a blank browser window acting as a brittle medium that can be shattered with the mere click of the mouse. Whether interpreted as a release from an overly wired world or attributed to the continual breaking-down of the Self, the effect is one of blissful violence and purgative joy. In the installation version the screen is simply painted onto a concrete wall lit only via a rapid strobe. Participants engage by projecting glass bottles at the painted screen, creating a euphoric crash and a rain of broken glass. On the floor, the shards remain as they fell, accumulating and leaving a shiny residue of the creative destruction.

Artist Bio

Rafaël Rozendaal has exhibited throughout Europe with recent exhibitions at Nest in the Netherlands, at AFK Sculpture Park in Berlin, and at the 53rd Venice Biennale. Rozendaal lives and works on the internet.